


Stripped

by SlvrSoleAlchmst1



Category: Code Geass
Genre: M/M, Zero Requiem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:09:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 125,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2802359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlvrSoleAlchmst1/pseuds/SlvrSoleAlchmst1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lelouch says, "Don't shoot unless you're prepared to be shot," but do maxims like that still apply when Suzaku starts taking off his clothes? Lelouch finds an attraction slowly stirring both of them. Flirtation between friends is fine, but Lelouch is still Zero, the one Suzaku denies. If their emotions are stripped down and bared, will they come to understand each other, or will misunderstandings just destroy them? What about once plans have been laid down for Zero Requiem?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lockers

Lelouch held the phone furtively to his ear. "That's why I said, Ohgi, have P1—"

The locker door that led in from the Ashford gym flew open. Lelouch sealed his mouth at once. Someone had arrived.

He hung up his phone, annoyed, which made Ohgi yell words Lelouch just ignored. Zero's order would have to be postponed. Lelouch had calculated wrong, if a student was still wrapping up from class here.

 _Tch_. Lelouch should have gone right outside. But he'd been tired, after running laps. To think his gym teacher had caught up to him, before lunch, to tell him his attendance was low. Lelouch hadn't cared, but gym class was the one grade he still struggled to uphold. Better to suffer once, today, than having to enroll in regular make-up classes that would steal from time as Zero. It didn't hurt, to run his laps one day, and spend time changing out of sweaty clothes.

Footsteps came around the lockers. Lelouch glanced down at his Ashford uniform. He'd reassembled himself by now, and appeared to be composed and unsuspicious. Good.

He made his way back to his assigned locker, pretending to have come out from the restrooms.

"Lelouch?"

"Suzaku!" Lelouch exclaimed.

Suzaku's Ashford uniform coat hung half off, draping across his head of tousled hair. The coat was moving in the wrong direction.

Suzaku didn't seem to mind.

"Gym class has ended," announced Lelouch. "Everyone just left. They all changed back into their clothes. There's no need to waste your time."

Suzaku didn't heed his words. He hung his coat neatly and smiled. "I came here for a make-up class. I've missed too much gym now, from being at work."

Lelouch blinked, and realized he should not have been surprised.

"Does a person like you even profit from gym?" he asked, leaning casually near his locker door. When Suzaku wasn't looking, he hid his phone inside it. "The military trains you much harder there, right?"

Suzaku made careful work of the buttons on his shirt. "That isn't the point, though, is it." Lelouch watched him turn and untuck the shirt's bottom, mindful of wrinkles he might need to iron. "It's about the discipline."

Lelouch allowed himself a smile. A wry one. "You're already disciplined."

Something caught his eye. An angry mark. A faded scrape across Suzaku's collarbone.

"You've been hurt," Lelouch intoned.

Suzaku glanced down at his chest. "Oh, that's old. It's already healed. Mostly, I guess. It was from—"

Lelouch maintained an even tone. "From?"

"When they thought I killed his highness, Prince Clovis." Suzaku looked at the ground, as if he were ashamed.

Lelouch's hand twitched, and his hatred boiled up. It had been almost two weeks, since the incident to which Suzaku referred. Britannia…. This was their fault.

Lelouch had known – and all too well – that his friend had been beaten while held and interrogated. But Suzaku, upon coming to school, had focused, and smiled, and put it behind. His body healed shockingly fast, as well. So, to see an injury still showed, that prompted all this pain to be recalled—

"It must have been an awful wound." He tried hard not to let his hatred show.

Suzaku shook his head. "It wasn't broken. My skin just bled. And now I'm fine."

Fine. Because Zero had set him free, and  _only_  because Zero had set him free. Otherwise, Suzaku would have been….

Lelouch allowed nothing to show on his face. Yet the longer he stood, as Suzaku undressed, the more he felt sourness churn in his gut. All the pain Britannia had caused Suzaku… and Lelouch had been too caught up in his secret work to help him heal.

"Your body can recover," Lelouch replied, "but that's no reason for you to brush it off."

"Okay, okay," Suzaku said. He stopped his task and met Lelouch's eye. A moment passed. Suzaku fidgeted.

Lelouch realized Suzaku was being shy.

"Are you going to stand there while I…?" Suzaku trailed off.

Suzaku had never been like this, in years before.

"No," Lelouch told him, maintaining his calm. "I'm sorry. I can turn around." He did so, hearing Suzaku sigh. The gentle shift of fabric made Lelouch fold his arms. He frowned. "You aren't hiding anything, are you?" he asked.

Suzaku's careful movements were worrying him. Did Suzaku conceal, perhaps, an injury much greater?

"Hiding?" Suzaku asked. His voice rose. He groaned. "I should have known you would catch me, Lelouch."

Lelouch had to use discipline he wasn't good at, not to turn around.

"I'm trying hard to hide a million yawns." Suzaku's locker door rattled; he'd bumped it. "Don't tell the teacher. My week has been long."

A pang ran through Lelouch's chest. Long, because…. Because, of course, of Zero. Zero had been moving, so Suzaku's side would respond. The military would be ever-ready, on its toes.

"I'm sorry you're so tired," murmured Lelouch. His guilt became regret, and then – because Lelouch loathed to regret his decisions – regret became a curiosity, instead. If Zero was the cause of weariness, of any pain in Suzaku's life, wasn't it  _his_ responsibility, then – Lelouch's – to ensure that everything could be made right? If he could right this for his friend, there wouldn't be a need for Lelouch to regret his own actions.

He needed to find out whether Suzaku had more bruises. Lelouch glanced at Suzaku's reflection in one of the gray locker doors, out of the corner of his eye.

He ceased to truly think, as he took in what he saw.

Tense, but very muscled shoulders. Tanned, broad, and angular above his exposed back. His waist appeared narrower than Lelouch thought. He wondered if Suzaku had been eating right.

Bare. Suzaku's appearance was bare. Britannia had taken Suzaku apart, and bared him, in this too-intimate way – so they could strap him up in prison.

Lelouch swallowed. He noticed no more injuries.

"Sorry," said Suzaku, "I'll be just a sec. My shoes are— uwah!" He almost fell down.

"Take your time." Lelouch's mind raced. Suzaku…. He should have been too balanced, too much full of stamina to trip. Even if he claimed that he was tired….

What if he was injured in the leg somewhere, or in the knee? What if Orenji – what if Jeremiah Gottwald – had made him crippled, dragging Suzaku to his execution?

No, no. Suzaku wasn't that hurt. Britannia would throw a cripple out of the military at once. Especially a Japanese one. No one liked the Numbers now.

"Aren't you going to take off your pants?" Lelouch didn't care that now Suzaku knew he was looking.

Suzaku pivoted, and Lelouch turned around. They looked at each other across the fat aisle. Green eyes had slipped very wide.

"No," Suzaku said. "I was going to run in them. I'm only going back to my barracks, after this. And besides…."

"Besides?" prompted Lelouch. His gaze drifted down Suzaku's sleek lines. He caught himself and stopped, but his determination thrived.

He  _needed_  to know if Suzaku was hurt. To get him undressed seemed to be the best way.

"Milly has everyone on lookout," Suzaku said. He very nearly pouted, and Lelouch let his arms drop.

"The president?"

"Yes. So I've got to be careful. It's kind of a pain, but she has good intentions."

Lelouch found himself grow annoyed.

What did the student council president have to do with what was under Suzaku's clothes? Lelouch started to filter through his options in his mind. Whatever Milly wanted wasn't relevant right now.

He could tell Suzaku there was a rule – that students had to run in their gym shorts all the time. Ah, but Suzaku wouldn't be fooled by that. If he had taken make-up classes like this one before, he must have run at least once without his shorts. What about when he came directly from work, and didn't always fully change out of his military gear? No, no, there should be something else.

"Um, Lelouch?" Suzaku asked.

Lelouch pressed fingers to his head, shielding his face as he concentrated. Bribe. There must be a bribe he could use. But Suzaku's straight-laced personality wouldn't accept that, would it. He could tell Suzaku instead there was something else at stake. Nunnally would look down on them, if they didn't dress properly going to school.

Or maybe Lelouch could ask to  _borrow_ Suzaku's pants. Yes, he could lie – and say he'd found a hole in his own. He'd say,  _I'll have Sayoko mend them by dinner, and then you can come get yours. I'll wash them_.  _We can eat with Nunnally._  Then, if Suzaku  _did_ reveal an injury beneath his Ashford pants, Lelouch would have a good excuse to make him stick around. Sayoko could treat Suzaku, before he left again for the—

No. Suzaku would have to leave directly after class. The military assigned him a curfew at night. The cost of missing that, for an Eleven especially, could land him a beating much worse.

"Lelouch, I should go start my class…."

Lelouch made a dissatisfied noise, deep in the back of his throat. Ridiculous. How could he fail to come up with a plan?

Suzaku was tucking his white shirt away. Lelouch resisted the urge to hit a locker, in his growing blaze of temper. He couldn't let Suzaku go, without providing him with help. He wanted Suzaku to keep in perfect health….

Lelouch's frustration at once knew no bounds. He'd get Suzaku to look at him. Eye contact. Then, he'd say—

What would he say? He'd say,  _Take off your clothes?_ No. Even worse! Lelouch grit his teeth and pressed his face into his palm. He would never use the Geass on Suzaku anyway, and even if he did, it wouldn't be in such a fashion. Breaking Suzaku's will by force was not a sin that Lelouch wanted to accept. Ever.

Suzaku flexed his arms. He stretched them out over his head. His torso rippled when he moved.

The ripple effect echoed itself in Lelouch's stomach; something fluttered. Damn it.  _Damn it._  He only had one option left.

He'd have to go the direct route. Suzaku would forgive him, wouldn't he?

"Well, Lelouch, have fun in math. You're going there next, right?"

This was all Suzaku's fault, for coming in and taking off his shirt. Lelouch's thoughts would not have travelled here. He braced himself for what he had to do.

"Don't just walk away, Suzaku Kururugi!" Lelouch used his deeply commanding, hard voice.

Suzaku paused. He paused and turned around, appearing troubled at the echo that voice caused. Like Zero's? Lelouch slightly lifted his tone. He'd be careful. He took a pace forward.

He advanced, keeping his expression strict, but he couldn't help the faint flush that he knew tinted his cheekbones. "Don't begin to strip," he cried, "unless you are prepared to be stripped yourself!"

"What?"

Cornelia could have burst in, with her knight Guilford, both of them in bikinis; Suzaku would not have reacted at all. His gaze was only for Lelouch – a gaze that was vacant but vaguely appalled. Lelouch registered that perhaps, Suzaku had never been this surprised in his whole life.

Perfect, then. Lelouch latched on to him.

"Ngh—ah! L-Lelou-aaaaAAGH!" Suzaku flailed his arms, trying to keep Lelouch away.

Lelouch's dark hair swung into his eyes. He tossed it aside so he could see, the better to grip Suzaku's belt buckle. A short scuffle displaced his feet, and he stumbled, but still held on.

"It's rude!" Lelouch continued, fighting rigidly with Suzaku's hands. "You can't start something like this and then stop!"

"I-I can't take off my clothes for gym?! Ah—! Lelouch, don't put your hands there!"

"Nngh, you—" Lelouch grunted, darkly, undaunted. "Stop getting in my way, Suzaku!"

Lelouch flung Suzaku's belt aside. In a flopping arch, it sailed into a locker. Suzaku watched it leave – while flushing hot, looking completely mortified.

"Show yourself to me," Lelouch commanded. He yanked Suzaku's pants straight down.

The resulting shout and the tumble of limbs careened them into a bystanding bench. They lost balance; gravity claimed them as one. The floor felt cold, when Lelouch splayed his hands on it to catch himself. He'd barely saved himself a broken nose.

Suzaku had failed to fare so well. His pants, around his ankles, roped his feet together. He said, "Ouch…."

Lelouch, above, looked down on him. The man he'd wanted to lay bare now lied exposed. But not a mark. Not a mark – on Suzaku's long, lean thighs, not on his knees… no lashes on him anywhere. Just a few old scars that Lelouch found, shining almost wetly in the high, florescent lights.

Lelouch ignored the way their breathing mingled. Suzaku had not been hurt. He could relax.

Then Lelouch realized there was one further profit to be had. Revelations might be found, in this dizzy mix-up, regarding an age-old question that Lelouch had wanted answered.

Curiosity took hold and reigned.

He trailed his gaze to Suzaku's hips, to find out which garment it was.

"Annoying," Lelouch muttered instantly. A combination? That was cheating. "Boxer-briefs?"

Suzaku's bright eyes looked overblown. He didn't move a muscle – just stayed splayed on his back. "They're right for any unplanned situations."

Lelouch said " _tch,_ " and glanced aside.

"Sp-speaking of which, Lelouch, was it your plan to end up straddling me this way?"

They both stared down again, at the same time; Lelouch's bangs brushed Suzaku's pinkened cheeks. Attention flew to Lelouch's spread legs. Their positioning…. It—

"Aahh!" Lelouch twisted aside.

It was compromising and explicit.

He backed off in a swift retreat, the speed of which he hoped he'd never have to use as Zero – but his heel got caught behind Suzaku's knee.

Lelouch registered a yelp of protest – or concern – but it failed to fully reach him. Instead of rolling off Suzaku, his head met his own locker door. A sharp report like a Knightmare Frame's fire echoed to the ceiling. And it hurt.

Lelouch rubbed his head. "D-damn it…." He shouldn't have been so determined to win. And now, thanks to his stubborn haste, Suzaku would think—

_No, ignore the implications._

Lelouch wondered immediately if the bump would make his Zero mask sit wrong. If the mask went even a little askew, during battle, or during a speech…. Someone might see. And learn. And then—

"—to hurt yourself." Suzaku spoke to him.

The shirtless soldier had climbed up. He looked as fresh and as innocent as a newly opened flower. When had he managed to pull his pants back on?

Lelouch registered Suzaku's hand, extended to him. He frowned, but he took it. Thank god this was over. Not even C.C. could make chaos like that.

"It's okay, Lelouch," Suzaku said. "I think I know the best way to repay them, for making you launch an assault."

"Them?" Lelouch echoed, his mind a great blank. It blanked again at the word choice.  _Assault?_

Lelouch decided bravely that the humiliations he suffered at school – caused in part by himself, no doubt, and his preoccupation as Zero – were possibly not worth even his newly acquired and righteous Black Knights.

Suzaku pulled him up, and now they stood against the wall. He tried not to let his eyes flick to bare skin.

"The student council," Suzaku said. "They started this."

"Y-yes," Lelouch managed. Of course, some sort of plot. He'd use it for his cover. Regain dignity. Right now. "It's so much like the president. I'm sure it's all her fault."

Suzaku nodded, seriously. "Mmn." His smooth brow creased. He had an earnest, probing stare.

Lelouch looked down at himself next, and at his ruffled clothes, feeling sloppy and self-conscious. Suzaku said, "We'll let them know, just to be fair – and then request that they destroy all the data. No one else will find out, then."

"Right." Lelouch used his commanding voice. Then he faltered. "Let them know… what?" Suzaku, corrupting data? Such—

Suzaku drew up very close. His hand still wrapped Lelouch's own. Lelouch had not bothered yet to let go. He backed up so his heels touched wall, mortified to find himself being boxed in.

"You wear briefs," Suzaku said, the wisp of his breath sending suggestion ghosting past Lelouch's ear.

Lelouch turned crimson in degrees. He started trembling. "S-S-S-Suzaku!"

He flinched, to shove Suzaku away, but Suzaku had already gone. He was doubled over, chuckling.

Lelouch now tingled. Chuckling  _hard_. This grim and stoic Britannian soldier? The one to cause him so much pain since he had denied Zero, and returned to face his charges? Would Suzaku dare to act rashly again, and throw out his own life for what he believed?

When had Suzaku learned to do things recklessly? To whisper near Lelouch's ear….

The wash of reality, in half a second, cleared Lelouch's palate completely. His cheeks cooled. He recomposed. He fixed his coat sleeves, one at a time.

"It isn't funny, Suzaku," he said. "If the president is involved somehow in the private matter of our underwear, we have to get the worst revenge." He smoothed his collar, tracing the fleur-de-lis.

"No we don't. Revenge is wrong."

Suzaku straightened, finally, and wiped away his laugh. His gaze still sparkled like two emeralds, while Lelouch simply looked at his friend with a frown.

"I guess this means the game is over now," Suzaku went on. "And so, like I said, we can just erase data. The game was to find out the student council's preferences and report them, and you were the last one on the list. The points were supposed to go to whoever figured out a preference first... ah, but—"

"Preferences?"

"In underwear. Shirley likes blue pairs, I guess. And Rivalz wears boxers. I think they have stripes…."

Lelouch's eyebrow slowly ticked. While Suzaku carried on, he ground his teeth.

"…ah, but Arthur is a cat. He doesn't wear anything. Do you suppose fur counts, Lelouch, for Arthur's preferences?"

Suzaku was an idiot. An idiot, an idiot….

Lelouch rolled his hand in a fist. "So your plan," he replied, "after I stripped your clothes, was to strip me back, so you could know what I preferred? And then you'd betray it, to the president."

"Except I didn't need to go that far," Suzaku replied. "Because I could already guess what you wear." The glint in his eyes had become a bit deep. It said,  _And I confirmed it after the look on your face._

Lelouch regulated his breaths. He couldn't maim Suzaku, for a simple thing like this. "Guessing people's underwear is not a skill to advertise," he advised, with the intention of walking away. Finally.

"Stripping people senseless in the locker room's not, either."

Lelouch's fist fell open, and he started to reply, but suddenly a smile smug with payback twisted up his mouth.

"'Senseless?'" He made sure to purr. "How flattering, Suzaku." Dark.

"Yeah. You really caught me off guard," Suzaku said, the barb of innuendo passing sweetly by. "Not even the army can actually—uwaaagh!"

Lelouch sprung and seized Suzaku's waist, yanking on one belt-loop of his freshly-donned black pants.

"I'll do it again," Lelouch replied, ignoring that surely his expression waxed maniacal. Furious, brimming with vengeance, and flustered. "This time I'll take pictures, and the president can keep it in her personal file!"

"That's— Lelou—! Ah, aah! D-don't!"

"I said 'don't strip,' to you, didn't I, Suzaku… unless you were prepared to be—"

"—stripped!" He knew. "But that's the line that I'm supposed to use on you! Y-you can't strip others unless you know you'll be stripped back…." Suzaku spun them, and came out the barrier that plastered Lelouch to the wall, again.

Lelouch's coat was pulled away. He yelled.

"Mmffgh—" Suzaku held him down, despite Lelouch's windmill arms. "I'm doing what you said! You should follow your own rules."

"You're not being fair, just relying on your brawn!" Suzaku's warm and supple hand slid down Lelouch's abdomen. It caused a melting hitch of breath that nearly stopped his heart. He thrashed.

They left the wall; they needed room.

The locker room door hissed open, at the same time one of the benches went over. A resounding crash drowned out their shouts.

For the second time, Lelouch rubbed his head, but this time he looked up from on his back.

His white Ashford dress shirt clung to him, damp. Its buttons gaped open, falling askew. Suzaku's hand rested near his skin, fisted tightly in the article of clothing.

"Oh  _my_ ," Lelouch heard. He cursed.

Suzaku's thigh pressed close between his legs. Lelouch's heart was pounding, hard. He wet his lips, and closed his mouth, to mask his light pants of exertion. Curse Suzaku's prime physique….

Milly folded both her arms beneath her ample chest, as if she knew the movement added somewhat to the debauched tone. "Oho~! Suzaku, you've done well, to catch the last one on our list."

Footsteps thudded down the hall. Shirley, Kallen, and Rivalz came to flank her.

"Now let's all see what our vice president wears!"

Shirley yelped. "B-b-but! Lelou—"

"Hah," said Rivalz, "Hey Lelouch, does this make you a bottom guy?"

"I'll kill you, Rivalz," Lelouch murmured, while Kallen said demurely, "It seems a bit too harsh, to expose someone here."

Suzaku withdrew his hands, and Lelouch finally breathed, but the pressure on his hips did not let up. Suzaku still hovered over Lelouch, but now, perhaps, it was a bit protectively. Lelouch stared at Suzaku's profile from the ground.

His friend said flatly to Milly Ashford, "Ms. President, removing someone's clothes without consent is wrong."

"Ehh?! So you won't do it, after all?" Milly hid her grin behind a hand.

"I humbly decline to strip Lelouch."

Suzaku bowed. Lelouch noted the soft curve of his ear.

Lelouch remained a victim, limp, too shocked to wriggle out from underneath his friend. His flush came back, and he wished he had more strength. "You say that now, you hypocrite," he rasped, "but a moment ago…."

"It was all in fun, Lelouch." Suzaku's countenance had wiped itself blank, in a surprising display of self-possession and control. He offered Lelouch a hand up. Lelouch couldn't analyze Suzaku's pacific tone.

Was it possible… that Suzaku also felt—? And had, right now, to pretend it wasn't there?

Lelouch paled. He backed away a step.

_Don't. Deny the implications._

Deny them… or make sure that Suzaku joined the Black Knights, at any cost, and very soon. Lelouch caught himself thinking it, and wondered if the Geass made him madman-crazy. What kind of will would Lelouch have to bend, to procure loyalty from someone so opposed to Zero's rule? Suzaku would choose Britannia, even if that choice killed him….

Fool.

Lelouch took in his friend with sharper eyes. Suzaku fetched his shirt back from his locker, glancing at the clock. Too late now, for his make-up class?

Suzaku covered himself again before the student council. Lelouch's fingers twitched, watching Suzaku move.

"I guess that's that, then." Milly sighed. "I'm sorry, Shirley. Now you'll never know—"

"A-ah! WAAAH—!" Shirley seized the nearest item – Lelouch's rumpled gym shorts, from his locker that still hung open – and stuffed it in the president's face.

Kallen made a choking noise. Rivalz, stricken, said, "That isn't kosher." The blue-headed boy followed them when Shirley shoved Milly back in the hall. "H-hey, Shirley! The prez has to breathe…."

"Your shorts, Lelouch," Suzaku said, stunned, while everybody swiftly left. Lelouch didn't reply anything back.

Kallen, the last one there, looked between the two of them. Lelouch, happy to focus his attention somewhere else, thought he detected a blush tint her cheeks.

"What's the matter?" he asked, making it mild. He hoped this had helped Kallen kill her suspicions that he'd been at Shinjuku, and might be linked to Zero. Terrorists – rebellion leaders – didn't engage in locker room brawls.

"Please be more appropriate at school," Kallen said, and slammed the door behind her as she left.

For one long moment, not a word was said.

Lelouch looked up, eventually, and found Suzaku smiling. A deep and emerald field of sunshine. Endless breeze. That was Suzaku's eyes. Lelouch tried not to end up lost.

"Learned your lesson?" Suzaku asked. He was trying to joke, but the tone came tentative.

Lelouch realized what they had done. Juvenile messing around, a game, that had bordered too close to a shocking attraction. And an attraction….

If it really was that, Lelouch vowed, he'd take the burden on himself. Suzaku didn't need to know, or need to think about it, or bear that weight himself.

Lelouch said, choosing a light, constructive tone – one that harked back to their years at the shrine, and told Suzaku firmly that nothing had changed – "I learned my strip skills should be faster next time."

Suzaku appeared taken aback. Then he laughed. He told Lelouch he had to get back to the military ground.

Lelouch walked his friend to the gold Ashford gates, and didn't move until Suzaku's distant form was gone.

He traced his burning Geass eye. "I'll find a way to strip you – of Britannia, Suzaku," he murmured. "Deny Zero for now. But, to get you on my side…. Perhaps I'll lay you very bare, so that you're mine… and then that man, my father, won't be able to take more from me."

C.C. came around from the bushes to the side. "Oh?" she cooed. "Did something happen with your boy?"

Lelouch shot her an acrid glare over his nose. But he didn't scold her for being outside. He merely watched her pick a strand of pizza cheese out of her vivid hair.

"Isn't it nice, thinking love might devour fate? It's usually the other way around," C.C. replied. Her voice drifted from light to dark. "Be careful, if you're pressing him, Lelouch."

"C.C., don't pretend you know the bounds and limits of my friendship with him. What I do doesn't affect the things he wants. I can only save his life right now, not change his mind." He tried to deny that the truth of it stung.

But he had time yet, to work it all out. He had time.

He walked across the lawn, to tell Sayoko to start making Nunnally's dinner.

"Hmm?" said C.C., to the sky. "It seems you might be right about that. Lelouch is the one getting stripped, in the end. He doesn't like to be denied." The breeze rustled the leaves nearby. "Don't tell me, you think he's not prepared? Well then, what was all his talk about back there? Don't shoot or strip, unless you're prepared…."

"Hurry up, C.C.," Lelouch called.

Together they went back inside.


	2. Rainbows

Running around the school promoting rainbows seemed a great way for Suzaku to get himself bullied some more.

"And so," Milly had called, over the intercom – Lelouch remembered it now, in sharp detail – "the person who spreads the most rainbow across Ashford for Pride Day will help their club win a prize…."

Lelouch had clapped a palm against his head. But by some act of deep restraint or possibly of God, he'd convinced himself he'd accomplish nothing but a headache if he fought for reasons why he alone ought not to be made to comply. There had been better uses for the churning mind of Zero, like deciding at last what kind of hanger Zero's cape should rest on, to maintain that curling fabric shape, and why. And so, Lelouch had mostly sat, and watched Suzaku say, "Yes!" to all Milly's demands. Suzaku had scooped up piles of pink, purple, and  _rainbow_  – oh-so-rainbow – chalk. He'd also given Arthur a rainbow-striped sock for his tail.

Lelouch had wondered how many bullying complaints he'd have to file – for the sake of his friend, afterward, despite knowing Suzaku would not want complaints voiced at all. Lelouch would have to do it on the sly.

And now? Now they all strung colors up around the school. Also inside the locker rooms. Lelouch would not acknowledge implications.

The nightmare of the whole event was thanks to Nina. She had asked about the princess.

"D-do you suppose," the pig-tailed girl had said, to the council room, shortly before – while Lelouch was deep in thought about Black Knights – "it might be nice to send Princess Euphemia something? A gift for saving me that time? I really want to try."

"The royal mail is monitored," Suzaku had said at once. "Almost nothing can get by. One time there was poisonous powder, and so…." He'd failed to notice Nina shrinking back from his voice, from the clearly Eleven presence of him, down to the way he sat knelt on the floor. "My coworker Cecile-san says not even love letters get through. It's horrible, that even those can't be delivered if you try." He'd frowned, and Lelouch had watched his hair fall in his eyes.

"Is that true?" Nina's shy, dejected flush had overcome her fear of Elevens, and had sparked a conversation about how to admit an attraction to someone if odds stacked against you. A furtive conversation – that no one was meant to hear, except Suzaku. But Suzaku lacked subtlety. And so the whole bored council listened to his loud replies.

Rivalz had burst out, "Nina – it's nice. It's nice to hear you talking about someone. Even if it is a royal princess. You like girls  _only_ , don't you? Girls are great! I want to take you out some time, and talk about—"

"Rivalz!" both Shirley and Kallen had yelled, while Milly just laughed, and Suzaku had said to Nina, very deeply shocked, "You're gay?"

That had been that. A plan had been made. A day for Pride, in which they'd all engage. The council had hooked up with the school's Gay-Straight Alliance. They'd balanced the budget and stacked the supplies.

That was why Lelouch was standing next to a bush, draping a flag on it right now. Standing near Suzaku, who was far too gleeful-eager, and not helping Lelouch because he spoke in depth to Nina.

"That's wonderful," Suzaku was saying to the girl. He didn't glance up at Lelouch when Lelouch loudly sighed. "I didn't know that about you at all! Liking her highness means you have good taste. Euphie— I mean, Princess Euphemia… She's pretty, and gentle, and has an open mind…."

"Y-yes," said Nina, trying her best to leave Suzaku's side. She trailed a batch of streamers in her hands, and had clearly exhausted her Eleven-quota – her tolerance amount – for the next month, maybe year.

"Suzaku," Lelouch called, flatly, to help the girl escape her bind. Suzaku at last glanced over, came, and Nina wandered off, heaving a sigh.

Lelouch put his hands on his hips. "How can you say those things about Euphie, with garish props like those in your arms?" He pointed at Suzaku's rainbow pinwheels.

"What do you mean?" asked Suzaku, his eyes wide. "Holding rainbow things doesn't mean I don't like women. I can't say that Euphie is pretty? She is."

Lelouch grit his teeth and snatched the nearest pinwheel. "Obviously handling them doesn't make you gay. If that were the case, I'd be gayer than you." He didn't look down at his flag, or his spray paint. "But I would like to point out you look anything but straight today."

"How so?"

"Your enthusiasm level." Lelouch very stiffly rearranged his rainbow flag.

"But Le _louch!"_ Suzaku cried, and it made Lelouch jump. The next thing he knew, Suzaku's pinwheels hit the grass. Suzaku started to help him drape the flag across the bush. "Celebrating diversity is good! It's important to learn to accept everyone."

"It's a shame the people you work for don't believe that too."

"You're not homophobic, Lelouch, are you?" Suzaku hadn't heard his muttered chide.

"I'm just saying, Suzaku, that they'll all make fun of you. You're already Japanese, remember? The council can't protect you from bullying forever, especially if you refuse to help yourself so they'll back off. It's better to maintain a neutral impression, and put ideas like these rainbows aside."

"So I should just hide it? My enthusiasm? I shouldn't try to educate the people who are ignorant – about same-gender relationships, or even Japan or Britannia? That's like saying it's okay to stand by and do nothing while people are mistreated in front of me."

Kallen took that moment to wander by.

"You  _should_  just stand by," Lelouch said, monitoring Kallen from the corner of his eye. "It's not your place to stand up for people who wouldn't stand back up for you. It's not worth the risk. You'll get yourself killed. Better to save your own life than theirs, by staying out of danger. Besides, if the system's gone wrong, there's nothing people like us can or should do."

Kallen, when she thought he didn't see, made a terrible face that broke her school character, mumbling something about his awful personality, his lack of potential, and his stupid waste of brains. Lelouch tried not to grin; he really did like Kallen. After  _this_ , her last suspicions about him being tied to Zero ought to be erased.

"That's horrid, Lelouch," Suzaku said, and when Lelouch looked up, Suzaku was hugging a section of flag to his chest. Lelouch actually  _felt_ horrid, getting plastered with an expression so sour from his friend.

"I… didn't mean to upset you, Suzaku."

"Except you did. You don't deserve to hang this flag."

Lelouch went inside to take a call from Ohgi. He told C.C. about Suzaku's reaction afterward.

She laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

"I'll Geass every pizza delivery man," Lelouch threatened, unable to take any further derision. "One by one. Until no one will bring you pizza, and then you'll learn it's not worth your own misery to laugh at my troubles."

"These are your troubles?" C.C. tinkled, rolling about in her unzipped straight-jacket, looking insane and amused on his bed. She presented every kind of wrong implication in image that Lelouch could possibly imagine.

He rechecked his door, to be sure it was shut, and that neither Sayoko nor Nunnally would see her if they passed. To make sure  _Suzaku_  wouldn't see, if Suzaku had seen him sneaking away from rainbow duties and chosen to follow.

C.C. said, "Even if he isn't as gay as he looked,  _you_ , Lelouch, are a better candidate for homoerotic suggestion."

"And your grounds for that statement?" Lelouch asked, sitting in his computer chair, and pulling up new information from Ohgi. Tamaki was draining their funds on booze and women. Tamaki wanted to invite Zero tomorrow night to a brothel. Lelouch wrote back, and told Ohgi to have somebody follow him and write down all his spending.

"The one who belongs wearing rainbows is you."

"I'd like to see your proof of that, C.C."

"It's still outside right now, spreading pride." She pointed. Lelouch looked out the window – at Suzaku.

Suzaku. Dripping chalk and streamers. Shirley stood beside him, yanking a rainbow hat down on his ears.

Lelouch slammed his laptop shut. Why did this, of all things, have to put life in perspective? Did C.C. know that he and Suzaku had grown awkward, since the locker incident? Or maybe only Lelouch felt awkward, every time he neared Suzaku now.

A little voice whispered, cruelly, in his head, that the locker room encounter had only fueled his need to focus on Suzaku – in ways that smacked of all but innocence. Lelouch found himself wondering about Suzaku's health now, far more than what was necessary. His eyes would get caught on small snatches of skin, looking for scars… or simply noting his skin tone. Suzaku's wrist, or the back of his neck, or his ear often ended up the pinpoint of Lelouch's gaze.

Suzaku hadn't helped, either. At lunch, when their hands brushed, while they were aiming for the salt, Suzaku would snatch his hand back and then quickly glance away. A few times Lelouch swore he saw hints of flush.

It didn't last, though. It never, ever lasted. Suzaku, it seemed, always recovered much faster than he did. There was no way to tell – without asking directly – what Suzaku was feeling. So Lelouch didn't ask.

It didn't matter, in the end. They wouldn't end up nose-to-nose, with bare skin, anywhere, again. It would blow over.

And that was for the better. Lelouch had almost lost his mind, trying to analyze whether or not the attraction he'd suspected was there truly existed. It was for the better, to brush it all aside. Cornelia was here now. Zero needed to crush her, use her for answers, gain power over her and move fast toward his answers. He didn't have room for distractions of this kind.

He thought of Narita, the place they'd head tomorrow. He'd told the Black Knights – and Nunnally – that he was going hiking. Mountainsides were preferable, weren't they, compared to rainbow campuses. They were.

Yes.

"Do you really have time for this drama, Lelouch?" C.C. stilled lolled atop his bed, but now she sat up, looking grim. Her voice dipped down into its lower register.

"It's only drama if something goes wrong." Lelouch got up and opened his wardrobe. He checked his bag, the one that hid his Zero mask. "As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with Suzaku. He's completely normal, if a little overeager, and I have no choice but to be willing to allow it. He does what he does. What have you heard from Kyoto?"

"What if he does something abnormal, now? Will it affect your decision to go on with this?"

Lelouch paused, with his fingers on his mask, in the midst of polishing its bluish surface. The clothes in his wardrobe hung above him, dark and stifling.

"We made a contract, C.C.," Lelouch said. "There isn't anything Suzaku can do to void that, despite that he's my closest friend." Lelouch allowed himself a solemn moment of honesty. "Despite, even if somehow, he became a little more."

He wanted to deny the implications, but he couldn't. Lelouch looked at his reflection, in the glint of Zero's mask. It was better to face all possibilities. All. No matter what they made him feel. His personal life often battled with Zero's, and he didn't want, in any way, to pay the price for being unprepared.

"What if he proposes having sex, and you agree?"

Lelouch yelped, and stuffed away his mask, and slammed the bag shut and told C.C. her words were out of line. She was utterly mad, and she could leave and not come back until Narita, and then she could stay three feet off from Zero at all times. C.C. climbed off his bed, and pointed out that she might fry an egg upon his face, it looked so hot. She started to laugh again, prodding his cheek. Lelouch took deep breaths and tried not to plot her demise.

A set of wheels hummed outside of his door. "Big brother?" they both heard a voice.

C.C. raised a finger to her chin, feigning thoughtfulness. "Will your sister support your perverted feelings for him, or do you think—"

"What is it, Nunnally?" In one smooth shove, he stuffed C.C. inside the wardrobe. The thud sound was masked by the click of the door, as his young sister opened it up and rolled in.

Lelouch hid the latch noise of the wardrobe's lock behind a throat-clear, and added, "How pretty. Is that a new dress?"

Nunnally giggled. "It's like you to notice," she exclaimed, as C.C. announced, " _I'm_ not the one who picked the closet, boy."

Nunnally didn't appear to hear. Lelouch saw her head tilt; she was listening to the tones of conversation that drifted from downstairs. After a moment, Nunnally grinned and said, "Suzaku seems to be giving our Sayoko a night off."

"He's ordering around our maid?" Lelouch swore he could hear C.C. guffaw, but all he did was breathe and ball his hands.

"Yes. I told him you were here. He came looking for you. He said you argued, and that he wanted to apologize."

Lelouch unclenched his hands, a bit surprised. "There's no need. We didn't argue. He just had a different opinion than me, about Milly's Pride competition today."

"Isn't pride a wonderful thing to be supporting? I know I can't see the colors of rainbows, the way they form a harmony, but I can still imagine it. Oh, and Nina gave me this." Nunnally raised her wrist. A rainbow bracelet. "Were you and Suzaku bickering about who could hang the most flags?"

Lelouch changed the subject. "Are you hungry, Nunnally?"

Nunnally smiled. "Yes. Suzaku wants us to have dinner together. He said you suggested the three of us do it, now that he's here, and said that he could stay tonight."

"He didn't specifically check with me," Lelouch murmured, frowning.

"But big brother sounds happy."

Lelouch sighed. Nunnally told him they'd eat in an hour, after the competition winner was announced. Lelouch announced that he had homework to finish. Nunnally left, and he used the homework time to make plans with C.C. – about how to turn Narita into a landslide.

Lelouch also made sure to call Q-1. His ace pilot sounded irritated, and when he asked why, Kallen's response to Zero was, "My school is too carefree. But I… I'd like to preserve that mindset for them. I want that kind of gentle world. Okay, Zero. I'll start the Guren Type II's manual. Tomorrow, I'll be more than ready to fight."

The sewing club won the Pride competition. Dinner time came on too fast.

"Suzaku is still  _here?_ " Lelouch cried, when Nunnally came back upstairs, and told Lelouch that she and Suzaku had cleaned together, and now were getting ready. "Let's go down then. Doubtless Suzaku can't handle all the kitchen chores alone. Especially if he dismissed Sayoko."

"Oh, I don't know," Nunnally said, tittering. Lelouch saw she looked radiant. The new dress she'd put on… was it because of Suzaku? "He said he's very good at the preparation part…."

They went down. Lelouch heard the  _thunk, thunk, thunk_ of the knife, long before he saw Suzaku bent over a cucumber. In an apron. Slicing away swiftly.

"You don't exactly look the part," Lelouch announced, stepping coolly through the door. He rolled up his sleeves. "You know, Sayoko wears a dress."

"Very funny," Suzaku replied, tossing his hair and keeping at the vegetable. "You know, the Pride game's over now."

Lelouch found another apron and donned it. Nunnally said – when Lelouch asked her if she'd be fine alone – "I'll wait at the table and fold paper cranes." She tried to hide a giggle. "Don't cook anything  _too_ strange together now, all right?"

"I'm just making salad," Suzaku called, glancing for the first time out across his shoulder. His tousled hair fell in his eyes, and a faint gloss of perspiration dotted his temple. Such concentration. And so very earnest.

Lelouch neared, his apron on, and analyzed the cutting board. Anything was better than staring at Suzaku's eyes. An odd thing struck him.

"Suzaku," he said immediately. "You've cut up three whole cucumbers." He tried hard not to let his volume rise.

"They were in the fridge," Suzaku replied, already defensive, ceasing his work mid-slice. "Sayoko said, when I offered to take over, I could start with the salad. She said the vegetables were all inside."

"That doesn't mean, 'Use all the vegetables.'"

A full head of lettuce, too, had been shredded. A bowl of carrot slices like a mountain grew beside it. Celery, in a tall pile. And radishes.

"You aren't hungry?" Suzaku asked.

"That isn't the point. Not even a horse could eat all that."

Lelouch stepped up and took the knife, which Suzaku yielded carefully. When their fingers brushed, Suzaku's hand was warm. Lelouch ignored the zing the contact caused.

"Why don't you get the meat out for the roast? It goes in that pan there." He would simply redirect Suzaku's efforts in the kitchen. A decent meal for Nunnally would be made up in no time.

Suzaku didn't move. "That apron, Lelouch," he said, a bit too casually.

Lelouch did not so much as shift his head, as he parted the cucumber slices by half. "You're wearing mine," he answered. "This one is Nunnally's."

"Oh? Too bad. It looks so cute on you."

Lelouch slowed down, trying to count the radishes. "I thought you just said the Pride game was over."

Suzaku leaned a hand on the counter beside him. He stayed well away, and didn't invade Lelouch's space, but an unmistakable lounge of a slightly cocksure brand had tilted his hips. He was looking around for the roasting pan Lelouch had indicated, already distracted.

There wasn't a suggestion in it, Lelouch told himself. None at all. Suzaku was being innocent, it seemed, or perhaps just getting him back for the dress comment a moment ago. Perhaps Suzaku meant to mindlessly banter. No doubt he'd learned to tease in that detached-yet-questionable style from Milly. Or… perhaps the style came from Nunnally, even. The remark had been as pure and clean in character as that. This was Suzaku, after all. Suzaku had never been one to engage in innuendo.

Except Lelouch deigned to glance up, at the last instant, just to make sure – because his confidence was rattled. And what he saw made him uncertain again. Unsure enough to frown, and feel his heart beat start to race.

Suzaku had lifted his free hand and tucked it into the back of his hair, pink-faced. "Where did you say the pan was? I still don't know my way around your kitchen."

Lelouch's mind wiped itself clear. This quickening between them, this strange resonance. Again now, manifesting itself? Suzaku, knocked off-guard by it as well. Or perhaps the temperature in the kitchen had climbed too high; Suzaku was only warm.

Lelouch speared a cucumber slice, and dropped it in the waiting salad bowl. He couldn't start to overanalyze again. He couldn't. There was one way he could check the theories he'd formed, to ensure he didn't waste his own time getting riled up or lost in questions, but it wasn't without certain risk. Should he attempt the risk?

He'd do it.

It meant he could avoid the route of asking directly, as well. Besides, flirting, Shirley often announced, was the best way to learn if people were compatible. If the strongest attempts were brushed off or ignored—

"Suzaku," Lelouch said, and Suzaku turned around. Lelouch forsook the vegetables and hooked his finger in the pocket of Suzaku's apron. The pocket at the waist, above the hipbone. Lelouch tugged.

Suzaku allowed himself to be drawn forward, very close – by the jut of that hip, which he looked down at, flustered thoroughly. "Lelouch?"

"You see," said Lelouch, drawing nearer still, making himself appear suave in body language, or appetizing – or perhaps slightly wanton – "I happened to be thinking, aprons really make—" His feet lost purchase on the floor.

It all happened again. They went down – because Lelouch had tried to take a step, to close the gap between them completely. Lelouch's shoe slipped fast in something wet… and now his back was flat in it. He felt it leak in through his dress shirt, cold, and far more shocking than the fall itself had been.

He shouldn't have put on a dress shirt at all, Lelouch thought, just because he'd seen his sister in a dress.

Suzaku – hauled down as well when Lelouch's grip on the apron had transformed into a death-hold – looked shocked from where he'd caught himself. Above Lelouch, suspended on his hands and knees. He lifted a hand up. It glistened. Wet too.

"What spilled on the floor?" Lelouch asked calmly.

"Water. From the lettuce wash."

"You neglected to dry it? Because why?"

"Because I heard you come downstairs." Suzaku's response was easy, prompt. "And the cucumbers weren't ready yet."

Lelouch tried to climb up, his elbows throbbing. He refused to look at Suzaku.

"There was no need to impress me," he said. He stilled again when Suzaku didn't move. He dared himself to look into green eyes.

Suzaku's stare was deeply thoughtful. "Can I ask—"

"While you're on top of me?"

"Huh?" Suzaku murmured. "Well, actually. Yes."

Lelouch felt a vein pulsing fast in his neck. "Ask, Suzaku." He shut his eyes.

Suzaku waited until he opened them again. Lelouch saw Suzaku had backed off a bit. But he was still there, hovering, looking pensive, and Lelouch had no choice but to wait for him to speak.

Earnestly, without a flush, and meeting his gaze in what was wholesome bafflement, Suzaku responded. "Why," he began, while Lelouch grew slowly warm at those great emerald eyes, "do we—"

Nunnally's wheelchair rolled in. She cocked her head. "What happened to the two of you? Your voices are coming from the floor…."

Lelouch dropped back his head, stifling a sigh.

"We fell over," Suzaku replied. He stood at once and gave Lelouch his hand.

"Your brother, Nunnally," Lelouch said, forcing a smile into his voice, "is not as charming as he might like to pretend." This time, he let go of Suzaku's hand at once, after he felt steady on his feet. "Not when he has clumsy jocks to contend with, at least."

He couldn't help himself from assigning blame. If Suzaku hadn't been so frustratingly hard to read….

Suzaku said, seriously, "It was you who pulled me down."

Lelouch twitched. He had really just tried to  _flirt_  with one Suzaku Kururugi, hadn't he. So he deserved every ounce of embarrassment.

Nunnally clasped her hands and grinned. When Suzaku asked her when Sayoko was coming back, Nunnally said she'd help them clean and hide the evidence of their disaster. Suzaku said, "First let's finish the work. Let's make the salad," and he hummed a little tune. He dumped every cucumber slice to be found into the bowl despite Lelouch's warnings.

Lelouch tried to act calm, when Nunnally came up to squeeze his hand. "He's allowed to choose ingredients he likes, big brother, isn't he? Or is that not it? Did you get hurt when you fell?"

"I'm all right," he muttered. "It was just a shock. Why don't you help Suzaku pick the dressing?"

"Even if it was a shock, it's nice to have Suzaku pull you up."

Lelouch didn't answer. He let Nunnally roll off and help Suzaku stuff the lettuce in the bowl.

C.C. leaned her head around the door, and spoke when she was certain no one but Lelouch could hear. "I no longer believe, Lelouch, that a space as tiny as a closet can contain you."

And then she laughed, and told him he might want to consider a fortress, and paint it up with rainbows.


	3. Guys' Night

_Nothing lasts forever_ , Milly always said to them,  _so try to enjoy this school life while you can_. Her phrasing was all that Lelouch could hear now, echoing over, as he kissed Shirley in the rain.

His first thought had been,  _But this kiss is my first._  Afterward, he'd recognized,  _I've made a big mistake. A bad mistake. I've killed Shirley's_ father.

He didn't have time to feel bad about their date. About how he'd been late, and hadn't brought her any present. Shirley deserved a present, for the way he brushed her off, and she deserved the date because she was Lelouch's friend. Lelouch liked her. He liked her, a lot, and it didn't matter that he'd been with Suzaku beforehand, exchanging the brief hello that had  _made_  him late to Shirley's date. Narita hadn't delayed him. It hadn't mattered – none of that – when he found Shirley in the rain. That Lelouch's walk had not burned thoughts of Suzaku out of his mind became irrelevant; the disaster right in front of him called for sharper focus. Lelouch didn't have time to feel his guilt, see Shirley's smiling face and banish it, and make it up to her, because Shirley hadn't even smiled. Shirley's tear-stained kiss beneath the equally sad sky made Lelouch think only that Zero had for the first time failed. Life with his school friends would never be the same again.

So he kissed her. He held Shirley as tightly as he could. He didn't ask Shirley to stop, when she pressed closer, with lips feminine-tender and warm.

"Lelou, I-I—"

"Shirley, I'm…." And he could not apologize.

Not until the funeral.

The funeral was worse. Even Kallen's staunch demeanor did nothing to save him from all the uncertainty he had built up. The way Kallen showed deep respect for the dead, and yet stuck quietly to all her Black Knight guns – Lelouch could tell it from the stiffness in her shoulders – was honest, and inspiring, and brave, really – for what was one man's life compared to Zero's? Even if that man were a precious friend's father? But that friend was  _Shirley_. Lelouch couldn't bear it. Shirley, loud and clumsy and kind. Comforting her mother as the dirt filled up the grave. Even Lelouch's Geass couldn't undo such a horror, and Lelouch would never use it to undo this, if he could. The path of carnage he'd chosen to walk would be worth all the blood, in the end – it was  _right._ But that didn't mean he could not feel it hurt.

He didn't need Suzaku to stand there, tearing Zero's methods apart _._

But Lelouch picked himself right back up, even if it took a little bit of C.C.'s cruelty. At least Lelouch had known enough not to expect it would be easy.

Thus, when Shirley very nearly shot him with Zero's own gun, he couldn't find room in his heart to be surprised. Sadness – only sadness bubbled up in him at that. It left a roiling conviction. He'd done too much wrong to save Shirley Fennette from the mire of blood and lies. He would erase it for her, the least thing he could do. He hugged her. He ignored her pleas and cries.

Just like that, someone he'd maybe loved or could have loved completely disappeared. The hole inside Lelouch's heart had no time to be filled. No, it would empty – as Zero ploughed on. Or perhaps his heart would sink, heavy and unwieldy, to somewhere he'd never find again. Sink, with all of the weight of the sins he now would bear, for the sake of his friends. Perhaps for the world. The last thing Lelouch wanted to think about was love, or feelings similar that might be lost among the sin. Feeling was for people whose hearts were soft, and tender, and  _his_  now was nothing but a chilly stone.

"Do we need to have Guys' Night?" Milly inquired, throwing an arm around Lelouch on the porch. He'd told her about his fight with Shirley. He'd only told because Shirley had walked up and said hi. Now that she was gone again, Lelouch wished to forget – but that had been Shirley'd Geass, not his own.

"You're a girl," Lelouch reminded Milly, while the president of Ashford laughed a laugh from in her chest. "It will take a long time for Shirley to feel better, but that doesn't mean  _I_ need any—"

"You do."

Milly released him, casting off all humor. She gave him a look that made him feel stripped bare.

"A fight between two people who are such close friends is awful. Keeping a thing like that inside is never, ever healthy. We'll have Guys' Night," Milly insisted.

"A Guys' Night with who?"

"Me, you, Rivalz, and Suzaku. And Arthur. In a few days, maybe, when Suzaku comes back to school. I'll even supply the buffalo wings. We'll deal with woes the manly way, Lelouch! What do you say, do you think you might come?" She knew better than to tell him this time he was forced to go.

"I'll think about it," was all Lelouch said. He barely managed the lump inside his throat.

Suzaku, she'd said. To see Suzaku again, after days away, spent working as Zero…. Zero had done very game-changing things since last they'd met, and had made fools of the Britannians. Lelouch didn't know if he could bear Suzaku's disdain if Suzaku talked about it – even if the disdain wasn't directed quite at him. Something in Milly's mention of Suzaku made Lelouch ache. He wanted to break down, like a child who might cry.

Suzaku was his  _friend_. His closest companion. Even if Lelouch could never tell Suzaku the truth…. Well, wouldn't it be like a breath of fresh air, something desperately needed, to see his friend again?

Suzaku, kind and gentle, now that he'd grown up. Suzaku… who'd die before seeing Lelouch hurt. The reasons for why didn't matter so much. So what if it was punishment, in the back of his mind? Lelouch would guard and guide Suzaku; Suzaku wouldn't die for Genbu Kururugi's death, and wouldn't take any more bullets for people in dark underground tunnels, all righteous and reckless. They were, perhaps, somewhat like each other's caretakers. If Lelouch wanted, for once, to let Suzaku wipe his stress away, with nothing but his presence and his voice….

Would Lelouch let him?

That very night, Lelouch's life went more wrong still. That night, C.C. left him for Mao, who had come back for his prize after destroying Shirley's mind. Lelouch stood alone on the staircase with his cell phone. C.C. shut the door behind her, leaving with her sarcasm apparent in her eyes. Just when he'd finally learned her real name.

Lelouch said aloud, to darkness, "Is it drama now?"

She'd accused him of it, drama, not so very long before. Lelouch had said,  _It's only drama if something goes wrong._

His focused frustration and the urge to save his witch was perhaps the magic miracle that made his plan go right. He felt invincible, in his borrowed police suit. He wasn't at all, and he wondered when it'd catch up to him.

Suzaku came back to school the next day. Lelouch was so tired, he barely could greet him. He didn't think how glad he was to see Suzaku's face – the way he'd wanted to, and drown in it, when Milly had brought up Guys' Night. They simply talked, about dinner plans. Rivalz skidded up and exploded about Milly's latest marriage interview.

Suzaku stayed a bright spark in his day, but he wasn't bright enough to warm Lelouch when Lelouch found out Mao wasn't dead.

Suzaku. Oh, Suzaku.

Suzaku helped save his sister. Lelouch couldn't have done it without him, and that prompted mixed feelings. Lelouch's gratitude, his sense of trust in his friend overwhelmed him, but his dependency on Suzaku was near maddening now. How would he have saved Nunnally if Suzaku hadn't been there? Was it fate that Suzaku  _had_  been? How could a situation so diabolical and so wretched turn so perfect in an instant, thanks to one Kururugi, and then force Lelouch to realize – like some sharp epiphany – that Suzaku was what kept Lelouch's world beautiful? Reckless, and brilliant, and talented Suzaku. He could dodge bullets and run right up walls.

He wanted that skill for his Black Knights. Himself. But none of their rescue was tied in to Zero, so Lelouch only stood there and drank in Suzaku's strength. That unadulterated resolve, driven by a goal that didn't involve Britannia for once.

The wreckage of the stained glass window sang beneath Suzaku's footwork, but the spell Suzaku cast on Lelouch fell apart, just like the glass. Lelouch saw too much of Suzaku's peeled-back mind. And he grew very angry at the truths Mao exposed.

Perhaps it was the best decision, in the end, to silence one like Mao forever. No one ought to expose the mind of any human being that way. Everyone was flawed. Lelouch was flawed, but Suzaku especially….

Suzaku wanted to die.

If Lelouch had thought he'd find a way to bear the sins of others, he didn't know how to bear that one at all. He didn't know what he should say to Suzaku. He felt so weary, suddenly, that he wanted to sit down where Suzaku knelt. Lean over Suzaku, and murmur, "Just cry." After all, Milly said that crying made it feel better. But this was something different. This was drama, wasn't it.

Lelouch told Suzaku to forget about Mao, that Mao's words were false, irrelevant. He left Suzaku kneeling there and fled to Nunnally's side. Suzaku came too, eventually, with a stance and an expression cool and easy and refocused. Lelouch started to find Suzaku could swiftly compartmentalize. It was a skill Lelouch wasn't certain he was capable of himself.

Not to a degree like that. It unnerved him. Suzaku glanced up and smiled. Then Suzaku hugged Nunnally as well, and Lelouch's nerves returned in cautious increments.

It was Guys' Night.

The council room lights had not all been switched on. They ate around one table, uncomfortably at first, as if they occupied a starkly lit interrogation room. The buffalo wings, though, tasted better than Lelouch would have given Milly credit for. Rivalz thought so too, and announced it aloud; it sparked a conversation about stereotypical cuisine for guys.

Milly said that boy food and girl food didn't exist. Rules like that were unfair gender assumptions that society forced on people, ingraining it in them from childhood, because humans liked to label and categorize. It was a lie, designed to simplify one's daily trudge through life – but instead of simplify, sometimes it just felt like an insult. It was misrepresentation of alternate and yet normal – if not  _common_  – cases. After all, Lelouch could cook beautiful casseroles, and Cornish hens, and fruit salads worth dying for, but that didn't mean his existence was wrong. Divergence cast a stigma on irregulars. That harmed. Lelouch shouldn't be penalized, should he?

"And what  _is_  Guys' Night," Milly urged, "but an excuse to get together and throw society's roles aside?"

"You didn't have to use my life to make your point," Lelouch exclaimed.

"Of course I didn't. But you  _are_  a rare case, Lelou." Milly winked, ready at once to give him more of a hard time.

Lelouch wondered if she meant to draw a parallel, despite her light-toned words. Her ideas about stereotypes applied to more than the student council staff, or to Ashford's carefree students. Suzaku was Japanese. The Numbers were hated by Britannia… but not here, at least. Not here any more. The student council threw out judgment, thanks to Milly allowing Suzaku to nest under her wing.

Lelouch wondered if Milly supported Zero's rebellion.

The tall and busty blonde went on. Here, tonight, they would talk about their feelings – the way guys were taught they shouldn't have to in order to solve problems or evaluate emotions. Granted, their time was spent alone with other guys – they all felt safest cordoned off from the girls, who were more used to sharing – but it was a start. Later, once the skill was learned, they'd have a co-ed night of spilling truth and secrets. Then they, the men, would feel just as free and open, and all the student council could interact with less drama. And more understanding.

Rivalz reiterated that Milly was a girl, but Suzaku said, "Ms. President, I think your plan is brilliant."

The sentiment made Lelouch look at him.

He hadn't once looked on Suzaku yet, that night. As if Suzaku had been waiting for it, their gazes met, and Suzaku softly smiled. Like the whole room wasn't watching their exchange, Suzaku said, "You and Shirley can work out your argument."

Lelouch flushed. How had Suzaku known his thoughts? Was Guys' Night specifically so Shirley wouldn't be there? Lelouch tried not to ball the hand he'd laid flat on the table. Was Lelouch meant to talk about her? Let it out? Everyone knew he hadn't been himself. Yet no one thought to question Shirley, the person more awkward thanks to gaps now in her memories.

But Lelouch had planned it that way, hadn't he. He'd counted on his friends to all react as they were doing. So he braced himself beneath Suzaku's kind gaze, and said, more to the room than to Suzaku, "Shirley and I will be fine. When you care about somebody, you forgive them and move on. You allow each other the time you need to recover, and then you have to press on."

"Even if it drives you crazy?" Rivalz asked him. "Even if they retaliate, and it gets worse than the first offense that happened between you? She's pretending not to know you! That must hurt pretty badly." Milly was nodding knowingly, at Rivalz's raised voice and his heartfelt words of sympathy.

"If you care, you'll forgive and move on."

_Someday, Shirley,_  Lelouch thought, heart pounding.  _Someday again we can laugh, if you want it. If I can't undo my heinous actions, I'll make friends with you this time, over again._

Suzaku watched him openly, without appearing embarrassed.

"Well then," said Milly, uncapping a bottle, "Let's celebrate the power that comes from loving friends and the others we love, even when they do things wrong. It's better to stay calm than to erupt and act rashly."

Suzaku twitched, and Lelouch didn't miss it. Was Suzaku still thinking of his dead father?

"Let's celebrate how strong we are as honest, loving men! Even though men and woman are equal here at Ashford, we men still have our pride! And when that pride is bruised by things like arguments, then we drink until we fix it, and don't need to watch our manners. Right?"

Rivalz uttered, with his head on the edge of the council room table, "Prez, you're a  _girl_. And I like you that way..."

Suzaku sat stiff with his hands on his thighs. Swiftly, however, he came to himself. "Boys or girls, and Guys' Night aside," he announced, deeply concerned, "it's against school policy to drink on campus grounds, Ms. President."

"That's why," said Milly, throwing an arm around the anxious boy, "I'm using my authority as president to overthrow it. What do you say? Oho, shaking your head? Should I use a spell, then? Hey, RELAX~!" She stuffed a bottle in Suzaku's hand. Suzaku looked flustered. Rivalz guffawed.

Lelouch reached out calmly for a bottle of his own. He didn't look at Suzaku. "If none of us are careless, there's no problem. We're all adults."

"And adults," Rivalz announced, "abuse their privilege all the time!"

Rivalz gulped down half a beer, while Lelouch tipped his head back and took a draft he didn't taste.

"I guess." Suzaku frowned down at his, and put his mouth around it like a child tasting broccoli or asparagus for the first time.

Milly told stories about past Guys' Nights at Ashford. Holding it was a tradition, she said, ever since the school had formed. They'd eat a lot, and drink a lot, and exchange stories from deep inside their hearts. Lelouch stopped listening, in favor of gazing out the window at the nighttime sky. He wondered how many pizzas C.C. was ordering in his absence. Her Cheese-kun toy already occupied too much space…. Suppose she acquired the whole mascot family?

"Was there something  _you_  wanted to share?" asked Suzaku of Milly, and Lelouch could not help noting that for once, Suzaku tried for delicacy. Milly cocked her head to one side. "I heard about your marriage interview," Suzaku admitted. "With Earl Lloyd."

Milly turned away from them. Her arms folded. She unveiled a smile Lelouch thought was wry. "Well," she said, "I can't just cry about it, can I? It's okay; there's no need to worry so much. I won't make a fuss. This is my lot, as heir. My frivolous reign as president can't last forever."

Rivalz squeezed his beer bottle and looked grimly aside. "You're being hypocritical, prez," he muttered hoarsely.

Milly appeared not to hear him. "That's why I want to have fun with you all now. Let's feel closer! Let's play a game. I want to stay up, with my boys here, all night."

Lelouch thought,  _No. You don't want to go to sleep_. She didn't want to have nightmares about marriage interviews, or lay awake attempting to console herself with thoughts that tried too hard to justify it, like,  _At least I'll get to design my wedding cake_.

Suzaku said, gently, "No, Ms. President. We should call the others then, too. Nina, and Shirley, and Kallen – if she's healthy. All of them, to be here with you."

Milly's smile grew more sad, but she looked up at the stars she knew weren't out and raised her voice. "As the one who looks out for everybody, and not just myself..." She pointed at Suzaku dramatically. "I can't let you get away with that talk! This party is really for you. You and Lelouch."

Lelouch, this time, was the one who gave a jump, and Suzaku said, strictly, "You're just changing the subject."

"President," Lelouch said, hopping on Suzaku's train, "that kind of meddling in affairs won't gain you points with students."

"Oh, so you and Suzaku don't have something deep to discuss with each other?" Milly's gaze looked like that of a panther on the prowl. "I didn't have to make you both a reason to address it? Nothing private, that involves feelings, and needs to be accounted for before it's too late to contain it? An issue of attraction, Lelouch?"

Lelouch's mind completely blanked. Suzaku froze, and softly cleared his throat. Lelouch, stupidly, allowed his gaze to slip sideways, to find tousled hair and assess its still owner.

Suzaku's expression. It couldn't. That meant—

Rivalz said, "Ohhh, right – the Nunnally issue. You must be kind of mad, Lelouch, that your best friend has been starting to put moves on your sister." He scratched the back of his neck when Suzaku uttered a cry. "Aha ha ha," Rivalz hunched his head. "Sorry, Suzaku. I bet it's rough for you as well, but there are lines, man. I mean, walking her around through the flowers in her wheelchair? All alone without Lelouch?" Suzaku spluttered. "You two should work it out."

Lelouch, very slowly, brought himself back to life. "Suzaku," he said. For a moment, all was silent. He uttered, "Do you have designs on my sister?"

Suzaku waved both hands. "N-no, Lelouch! It's not like that!"

Lelouch forgot everything but Nunnally's innocent smiles and laughter. He thought, too, of her dress. That special dress she'd worn. Suzaku got up from his chair, rounding the table. Rivalz just frowned, and Milly raised her eyebrows.

Arthur meowed and blocked Suzaku's path.

"Lelouch, no. You know that I— Nunnally's— uwaaaagh!" A hiss and a tripping sound. "Ow, Arthur… aah!"

Lelouch very slowly rose too, unconcerned. Suzaku's plight with the cat didn't matter. "President," he said, "you're right. We need to work this out."

"You're going to forgive him, of course?" asked Milly. And she winked.

The wink did not throw off his cool. Lelouch replied, "I want to talk to him. Alone."

"I won't stop you," Milly sing-songed, and Rivalz looked elated, at the thought of him and Milly left alone. "Go hash it out, but when you come baaack…."

"I know," Lelouch exclaimed, snagging Suzaku by the collar. He hauled Suzaku away while Suzaku detached Arthur from his calf. "When we come back, we'll be made to share our feelings."

"Lelouch, I really didn't— I-It's  _Nunnally_. She— waaugh!"

Lelouch dragged Suzaku down the hall.

They entered on one of the far, empty classrooms. Too far away for Milly to hear them. Lelouch left the door propped open a crack, enough that he could see the reflection of the hallway in the knob. If anyone came, he'd spot movement in advance. He would stop what he knew now that he had to do.

_And what exactly is that?_ his cruel mind cut in and asked. Lelouch ignored it. He kept himself on  _Go_.

It was just…. Lelouch could think of no time better than right now, to test Suzaku. That and that alone had been the motive for this talk.

"We shouldn't sneak around the building when it's mostly closed," Suzaku was saying, glancing into corners like he prepared to fight ghosts. It hit Lelouch that Suzaku had a dire disability.

Suzaku couldn't comprehend what it meant to relax. Ever.

Lelouch refrained from rolling his eyes. Perhaps Lelouch should have insisted that they brought their beers along. Alcohol, he realized. Something with more power of persuasion than the Geass. Also, less debilitating. And more useful than other intoxicants like Kallen's mother's sweet Refrain.

Lelouch should have used alcohol on people, at least to start, before relying on the Geass.

But alcohol wore off, Lelouch knew. And he shouldn't allow his mind to wander. Not with Suzaku, here like this. This was his chance, and he needed to use it.

Suzaku was tracing the shape of a desk. Lelouch had to get him to state his intentions.

"Milly's right," Lelouch announced. "We have something we should discuss."

The direct route, at last. The only path he hadn't tried.

Suzaku said, "I would never,  _ever_ attempt to deflower Nunnally."

A silence passed. The desk Suzaku leaned over creaked. Lelouch's control felt erratic, like the hands on a wrongly-ticking clock that timed in spurts instead of seconds.

"I never thought you would do so, Suzaku. But use of the word 'deflower' shows you've put too much thought toward it."

"Aha ha." Suzaku backed up a step. "D-don't make that face. You  _know_ I—"

"I do, yes."

Suzaku looked taken aback, and then relieved. "Then… this is actually about Nunnally's kidnapping?" he said. "You still want to keep it a secret from the others." Lelouch gave no reply. Suzaku clawed deeper for a thread, and found one that further unraveled the rich tapestry of his face rather than mend it up. "Not about my father, Lelouch. Please, don't ask me further about that."

"I won't ask you. That I promise."

"Then… is it Shirley? You want my advice?"

"No." Lelouch swallowed. "Put the things she says out of your mind." Did this mean, then, that Suzaku honestly had no clue?

"Oh. Okay. Um, well then, what?" Suzaku's eyes expanded in the darkness of the classroom. "You're scaring me at this point more than Arthur ever does." Innocent, Suzaku waited, supposing not at all that Lelouch had darker intent.

He sighed and went to lean against the window. A smudge streaked the glass, but Lelouch look right through it.

Suzaku stayed where he was. He milled about the empty desks. Lelouch watched his reflection, and remembered, too, to check the doorknob. Despite that suddenly Lelouch wished hard for some blazing distraction, the only thing that moved at last was Suzaku, poking at someone's abandoned pencil.

Would this be a useless conversation, if they had it? Suzaku hadn't analyzed the chemistry between them. It was only Lelouch who dwelt on it, just him, and whatever sparks occasionally rose between them, smoldering…. Well, it didn't need to merit action, did it. It didn't even need to merit answers. Not if thus far it only piqued, and stifled, and drove insane one curious party.

It was like Lelouch had decided before, in the locker room, when it first cropped up. If there was attraction, Lelouch would not make it Suzaku's burden. He'd keep it to himself. Elect to hide it.

He shouldn't have let Milly's talk of casting aside roles seep into him. They were two males. Two males who were friends. They didn't speak of sparks, or their renewed relationship, or their relationship's confusion, even if the mess felt glaring. Lelouch needed to craft a cover, now, for this trip to the classroom.

He wished the phone would ring for Zero. He'd… he'd have to change the subject. Make something up. Tell a story. What would Suzaku want to hear?

Suzaku said, "No, it's fine, Lelouch."

Lelouch turned his head, swiftly closing his mouth. He managed, "But you don't know what I was thinking."

At that statement, Suzaku laughed. A soft, chiding chuckle. He walked to the window.

Lelouch looked back out. Watched his breath fog the glass. Suzaku was too near him. Magnetic attraction….

"There's only one other thing I can imagine you'd come up with."

He didn't like Suzaku's calm. That knowing expression. Lelouch had missed something.

He said to Suzaku, "You're standing too close." Suzaku had come near, and propped an arm against the pane.

"Lelouch," Suzaku murmured. His tone didn't tremble, but his brow furrowed, as if he fought with pain. "Should I ask the question I had at your house?"

Lelouch had lost control of this discussion. He couldn't focus. Suzaku was much too near. He smelled faintly musky and like… buffalo wings. A tang in his nose that recalled him to Guys' Night. They should go back. But Lelouch wasn't moving.

He managed a reply, only half aware that he gave out permission. "Go ahead," he answered. "Ask me, then." He was already responding to the guiding touch of Suzaku's hand.

Suzaku turned him by the hip, so they faced each other. Indecently close. Inches apart… and Lelouch simply let him. He didn't flee. He didn't talk. His compliance seemed to confirm something startling for Suzaku, who froze there a moment, like he'd lost track of his question.

The place where Suzaku's hand touched him felt warm. A heat coalesced in the spot despite his layers of uniform.

"Why do we," Suzaku exhaled, the breath a temptation so close to Lelouch's lips, "keep ending up…" his friend leaned in "…like this?" Nose-to-nose. Tangled up with each other. The swirl in his eyes said he hadn't disliked it.

And there, there it was. Lelouch's whole answer. Wrenching his gut in a twist not unpleasant.

_Suzaku felt it._

Lelouch bit back a groan. Suzaku swallowed, watching it happen.

"Suzaku—" But Lelouch stopped. He gripped the windowsill. Doorknob. He ought to make sure no one witnessed—

Suzaku couldn't seem to shut his mouth. "It's hard to stop, at just this, every time. I keep wondering if I should let it happen more," he said, "something like…?" Suzaku suddenly moved. He tipped Lelouch's face up by the chin. He dipped his mouth to Lelouch's ear and nipped there, lightly. Lelouch froze.

He froze, but like the coldest ice, he burned. He burned in a sweep from his ear to his soles. "You ask… some very inconvenient questions." His tone came strained with the effort of control. He wasn't checking the door any more. "How am I supposed to answer that?"

He could imagine C.C.'s laugh.  _You didn't plan for how he might respond?_

With an energy he called up from Geass knew where, he pulled himself away and backed off a step.

Suzaku leaned on the window, looking genuinely shocked. "I read you wrong?" he inquired.

"No, you didn't."

Being so close to Suzaku felt  _good_. A second later Lelouch was embarrassed Suzaku knew it. He tried not to measure the taut, fine line where Suzaku's neck met his shoulder, and said, "It's just… why didn't you tell me, if you noticed?"

A flat stare. "You would have denied implications."

Lelouch snapped his mouth closed. Suzaku was brash.

As if Suzaku could sense Lelouch's developing defenses, he caught him by the wrist and held him very gently still. "Is this something you might want?" His careful gaze said,  _Or at least want to try?_

"I don't know," Lelouch murmured, gasping, as Suzaku took off again – leaned back in, without permission – and nibbled at his ear some more. As if a spell induced him to complete his focused task. Teeth, exploring, pressing down. The puff of breath. "You're doing things—"

"—too fast?"

"Understatement," Lelouch gasped. His heart pounded quickly. Fingers closed on Suzaku's shoulders, like the grip could ground him there.

"Am I coming on too hard?"

"Where do you even learn phrases like that?"

Suzaku chuckled, detachedly, as if to make sure Lelouch knew he just teased. Lelouch's mind – it was a whirl.

And so he relied on his body instead. His hands moved, fast like Suzaku. His fingers found Suzaku's collar, and swiftly began to undo clasps and buttons.

"I think I understand you, finally," Suzaku said. He ignored Lelouch's need to make a slack mess of his clothes. "You're always lost in thinking. Even now, at least halfway. What happens if you stop, Lelouch?"

Did Suzaku want him to relax? Irony.

Lelouch gave him no answer. His body felt tingly, too tight somehow, as if swelling with both acute need and pride, or caught between. He refused to let Suzaku's murmured words elicit groans.

" _Can_  you stop?" Suzaku asked. "If I were to distract you, more, right now—"

Lelouch did groan, then – implications– and Suzaku's star-bright eyes shot wide. Wider, at Lelouch's sound, because it seemed to cause a sharp reaction in himself. One he hadn't recognized as strongly as Lelouch, Lelouch realized. Until just then.

"Oh," Suzaku rasped, as if becoming lucid, "I think I understand now, too, that I would want it. Badly."

It was his turn to back away, and look something amazed and mortified. He sat himself down in a chair. He twiddled his hands on the desk.

"Now you know why I did nothing, Suzaku." Lelouch's voice was husky. Low. Voluptuous yet hard, like Zero's. "Acting on desire like this means responsibility."

Suzaku's frown seemed turned inward. He said, "I don't think I could help it much, though. Responsibility…. You don't think I'd play with you, Lelouch, like it was nothing?" His voice rose at the end, like a spoken question mark. The crumple of insult and disapproval on his features proved for Lelouch, who hadn't truly thought it, that such a game was not one Suzaku would think of playing.

Good.

Lelouch walked over, splayed a hand atop the desk, and leaned to look in Suzaku's face. Suzaku glanced up and ran his tongue across his lips. "Lelouch. Lelouch, you were right, you know. People could say things. Some might have issues. But still, I—"

"Are you worried about yourself?" He felt impatient. He'd  _warned_  Suzaku. And if Suzaku brought up Shirley right now….

"No. Worried about you. Worried about what Nunnally—"

Nunnally. Shirley. He cared for them both. But neither of them made him react like this. Lelouch now threw caution aside like a rug, and walked on the path of recklessness and passion.

If it were Suzaku, it all would be fine. If it were Suzaku, they would find a way to face it. Nunnally would be happy for them, eventually. Shirley would smile. To tread this water with Suzaku…. It felt like a swim that leeched the weariness from bones, and gave pleasant floating sensations. Relief.

"Do you want it?" Lelouch asked him, hoarse. Suzaku's eyes got caught on his lips. He'd moved himself close; his hand cupped Suzaku's cheek.

Lelouch did not wait for Suzaku to reply. The bayou of green eyes announced his position.

"Then take it. Don't just make me wait."

Suzaku followed the order instantly.

He firmly, confidently locked their lips. The last real thought Lelouch had time for was recognition – that he enjoyed not having to give the order twice. Suzaku was compliant.

Suzaku now  _kissed_  him.

Lelouch forgot to care about noise.

Suzaku planted his feet flat on the floor and shoved the desk chair out. The metal scraped and whined. Suzaku kept them connected by his hold on Lelouch's hip. It occurred to Lelouch that perhaps Suzaku enjoyed his slim hips, the narrow way they dipped, so he remained standing. Then Lelouch moaned. Suzaku had ceased one kiss only to come back in with another, more demanding. First their lips brushed, then pressed swiftly together, then Lelouch lost reasoning power as Suzaku began to lick and nip.

He needed to breathe. "You're good at this, Suzaku."

"I haven't practiced." Hands, swift, pulling him back.

" _Why_ are you so good at this?"

"I haven't really done it."

Lies.

The hell Suzaku hadn't done this before. Lelouch ought to be taking  _lessons_  from him. The way he was moving, so natural, responsive…. Lelouch hadn't been bad at it himself exactly, when—

No, not Shirley. He wouldn't think of her. Shirley was gone, ah— but she hadn't complained. And yet kissing Suzaku felt entirely different. Like Lelouch was floundering just to keep up. He couldn't take air, couldn't think, couldn't flee…. Suzaku's fingers squeezed – tantalizing and firm – where they gripped Lelouch's hips, drifting up under the hem of his clothes. Mindlessly, easily, like he thought not at all. Suzaku's neck craned upward where Lelouch's mouth tempted, and then there was nothing but light, panting sounds.

The contact wasn't enough, after a moment. Lelouch did not acknowledge when he moved; he simply did it.

He was straddling Suzaku, sitting across Suzaku's thighs, on the chair, losing control more when Suzaku made a sound.

Lelouch threaded fingers through Suzaku's hair. Suzaku tilted his head back in response to the silent command.

"Suzaku..." His world was tilting, and melting away. Shirley, the Black Knights… all of it, gone. He felt dizzy, heightened, titillated. Zero was something from a different reality, something not part of their touches and sighs. Consequence was something he had fully left behind, at least for now – been released from, in favor of this high.

He wanted so much more of it.

It occurred to Lelouch he hadn't done this before with anyone solely because he hadn't trusted anyone like he trusted Suzaku. There was no one better than Suzaku to give and take this intimacy from him. Shirley had been sweet, but she had not been aware of his mind, or his wants. She was not swift, bold Suzaku – the one who understood him, and held part of him inside himself. Close friends… and now, it seemed, a little more.

Lelouch tugged on Suzaku's hair. Suzaku groaned. It came out loud.

"Mmn," he said, his grip still at Lelouch's hips, "Mn—" A slight shift. "Lelou— ah!"

Their panting mingled. Lelouch's hands roved everywhere. To the nape of Suzaku's neck, down Suzaku's torso, over Suzaku's chiseled abdomen and shoulders. Suzaku's tongue darted against his open, seeking lips. Lelouch let him inside, completely mindblown by the kiss.

It seemed only appropriate that Suzaku should cross lines no one else had. That Lelouch should cross Suzaku's, too. Was there nothing they could not achieve like this, together? Pleasure, even! Pleasure, now. Achieved. Suzaku's tongue was moist, and hot; Lelouch's met it, twirling there, until they broke in tandem on a gasp.

"Y-you're a little more adventurous than I expected." Suzaku could barely form the words.

Lelouch said, "You don't know how often I thought about it."

"That's…." Suzaku's gaze grew deeper. Wanton. "That's… fantastic."

"Fabulous," Lelouch corrected. He kissed Suzaku again, before Suzaku had time to laugh.

He was losing his mind with the feel and the taste; he couldn't get enough of this feverish kissing. To think this simple, direct kind of coupling, with someone so easy to be near, like this... To think it elated, and intoxicated...

To think what Lelouch had been missing.

"But, by the way, how you're sitting, Lelouch, if you stay there—"

"My legs are too weak now to move." He caught up Suzaku by the mouth again. Harder. Gripped Suzaku by his open collar, until Suzaku's pace grew quite fervid and desperate.

"Lelouch," Suzaku breathed, and his name was a beg. "I have to go back to the army tonight."

"Then you shouldn't have come to Guys' Night."

Lelouch didn't mean it. But he wanted no talking, no talking at all. He didn't want the pressure on his lips to start to fade. He would kiss until his lips had turned puffy and tired. He couldn't get enough. He  _could not get enough_.

Stopping felt impossible. Suzaku.

"If I go and can't focus, if I can't be ready… and they need… for me to launch..." Suzaku stopped. He hungrily seized Lelouch by the waist, and shifted him close and devoured his jawline – tracing his tongue in swirls down Lelouch's throat. When he had got Lelouch's collar undone? Lelouch shuddered. He arched his back into the touch. His hands scrabbled for purchase against Suzaku's shoulders.

He wondered if Suzaku would take his shirt off if he asked.

But part of his mind hadn't missed Suzaku's words. He eased back into thinking. "To launch?" he said, reluctant. Launch what? Suzaku had said he worked in the technology and engineering sector.

Suzaku stopped kissing him, but only for an instant. Then he said, "Nothing. Launch a project. I'm stressing."

The remark took Lelouch fully out of his haze. Stressing? Right now? In the midst of a kiss?

Suzaku seemed to realize he'd said something wrong. "I didn't mean it like this isn't a pleasant distraction. Ah— not just  _distraction_. This is something I wanted. I just meant—"

Suzaku's relaxation disability.

Lelouch used every ounce of mental prowess he had, to lift his mind out of the gutter and assess it. Suzaku, pink-faced, looking hassled and anxious, like someone had given him sugar or coffee. That pained, but hungry look again crossed his features. Lelouch realized he sat flush now against Suzaku's lap.

Slowly, very slowly, he replayed in his head what they two had been doing. Desire swirled and pooled perilously in places Lelouch hadn't dared to consider.

"Perhaps we ought to stop," he whispered, though whispering it was a struggle.

"Yes," uttered Suzaku. It came out high and short and strained. "But not because I didn't like it. Things just went—"

"—too fast," Lelouch responded. It was a chore to keep himself from leaning in again. His voice melted like dark, sensual chocolate. Couldn't help it.

"So, why does this work so well and keep happening like this, really?" Suzaku said, referring to the attraction that had started this. A poor distraction.

"Because it's right," Lelouch intoned. His eyes roved back to Suzaku's lips. Suzaku groaned, while Lelouch let the phrase sit.

_Right_. It was. The one thing to go right in days.  _Please don't let it become drama_ , Lelouch begged, silently, of any god who still had ears.

"Can I come over after work again soon? If I can make them let me leave?" Suzaku paused. His eyes fell to the floor. "If Zero doesn't do anything else extremely bad?"

Lelouch fought back desire and got off Suzaku's lap.

"Zero won't," he said.

Suzaku said he believed it.


	4. Spilled Milk

Thoughts of Suzaku had not once left his head.

That was why, when classes the next day at last concluded, Lelouch let go of dignity and jogged back to the clubhouse. He slowed down, just outside his residence.

A lean, male form already waited for him. With windblown hair and mischievous, bright eyes. Those large eyes crinkled even more around the corners when Lelouch neared. He leaned, with one arm, on one of the lofty Greek columns that lined the clubhouse porch. Slouched. And all while he looked much too appealing, as if he didn't know the power of his jaunted hips. Perfect mix of innocence and insolent temptation.

Lelouch wanted to kiss him. Toss him up against the column. Leave him ravaged, hungry. Make him burn until he groaned.

He said, "Stupid jock. You ran."

"And you tried to." Suzaku stifled a laugh. He looked happy. So happy. Lelouch felt relief hit him.

He climbed the three or four short stairs. The breeze found them both and ruffled their hair. Suzaku glanced up, at the yellow ball of sun, and grinned – like the world had birthed this day of birds and flowers just for them.

Lelouch wanted that gaze of keen contentment back on him.

"Did you take good notes in history? We'll study. Then do dinner. We can eat outside, where it's bright and warm. We'll talk about your other classes, too. You've fallen far behind…. I'm sure that Nunnally can also aid you."

"You're going to tutor me?" Suzaku's gaze twinkled. "You know, Lelouch, school has become trouble. For example, that art class this morning…."

Lelouch blinked. The art class that he meant…. Where Lelouch had been forced to become the students' figure model?

Suzaku's green eyes were deepening. He wet his lips, as if caught in a spell. "I may need help in that class, too. It was very, very hard to focus, looking at you…."

Lelouch started, and then he felt a heat. "Was it hard, Suzaku?" he said. His tone picked up a deeper glide. "How hard?" He gave it emphasis. "Indulge me. Tell me just how hard."

He thought nothing of prying eyes. Or ears. At least they stood masked by the column. If possible, Suzaku's gaze swirled in that much more new passion – and in amused surprise. "I didn't think that you were like this. I didn't."

"You shouldn't feel shocked," Lelouch exclaimed, still in his low, quite-unchaste voice. "The whole student council can vouch for my personality." He relished Suzaku's increasing attention.

"It's twisted."

"Just like always. But it seems I've found an outlet."

He'd already closed the distance between them. Suzaku didn't protest whatsoever. In fact, his hand came to rest upon Lelouch's hip – possessively – when Lelouch smoothed Suzaku's fleur-de-lis.

"An outlet?" Suzaku said. "I'm here so you can satisfy your irregular fantasies?" Mock indignation. Lelouch smiled wryly.

"Only the best ones."

"Ah," Suzaku said. "So not the ones you've had about wanting to crush Britannia."

A frown. Except, a playful one. A pout of mock-firmness, from the off-duty soldier. The soldier representing Lelouch's hated nation. Suzaku opened his mouth again.

"I don't know how I feel about that kind of BDSM play."

Lelouch ignored the irritation the remarks inspired, in favor of the pleasant nearness that now overtook them. Such easy, instinctual intimacy. So sweetly, simply automatic. Warm. It felt so natural. "BDSM play?" he said. "With a soldier like you? Such a thing wouldn't work. Your body's already too used to strain and pressure."

"Would you like it if my body started getting used to you?"

Lelouch's pulse fluttered.

"There's time, Lelouch. I don't have to go back tonight." His hand slipped from Lelouch's hip up to his waist, and pulled him closer in.

"You're very good at making it too hard for me to function."

Despite that their flirting seemed awkward, he liked it. He wondered only if they'd started their encounters backward. Wasn't the flirting supposed to come first? And yet, instead, they'd shared a kiss…. Lelouch touched Suzaku's lips, tracing them lightly while he held eye contact.

Suzaku spoke softly against his fingers. Then he licked one. "Hard, Lelouch?"

He started to suck on Lelouch's ring finger. Lelouch's lips parted and the blood in his face rose. The way Suzaku did it, absently, as if it were nothing, and while Lelouch burned…. As soon as the suggestion started, though, Suzaku released him. He left Lelouch dizzy.

"I guess I should be careful," Suzaku said. "Someone who got himself pummeled as a kid, and couldn't run up the shrine path without panting…. I'll need to be gentle. You even skip gym. Do you have a weak constitution, like Kallen?"

Lelouch seized and halted Suzaku's wandering hand. "Don't compare me to a woman." He dropped the hand in favor of Suzaku's golden-dipped uniform. "I'm weak only when it comes to your administrations. And—" he pulled Suzaku flush, making Suzaku's breathing catch "—I'm not the same sour, helpless prince who needs your protection, or your self-righteous consideration, you damn grumpy samurai."

"Hmn, you didn't need it?" Humor glinted in Suzaku's eyes, and it said,  _That's not how I remember any of our childhood_.

Lelouch's pulse pounded the way it did when he performed as Zero, on the battlefield. Boldness. Risks. Adrenaline.

"I need something quite different now from what I did back then," Lelouch indicated, far more husky than he'd meant it to come out. It put the seriousness back on Suzaku's face at once.

It felt so good to elicit that reaction.

"God," Suzaku said, missing nothing, when Lelouch pressed himself against his thigh. "Lelouch, that's so…. You're getting—"

"Suzaku!"

A voice. A girl's. They stepped apart.

"And big brother, too – is that who I hear? You're back from class! Is it dinner time yet?"

Such interruptions happened more than Lelouch had ever wanted to admit to.

Lelouch supposed it was the price he paid to wear a mask. He'd chosen to keep this secret from his sister. He wanted to tell her, but it was too soon. Even if she were his trusted young sister…. The more people knew Lelouch valued Suzaku, the more Suzaku might be in danger in the end – from warped people like Mao, or from those who might find out that Lelouch was Zero. His enemies would use Suzaku. Suzaku's safety was delicate enough as it was, thanks to Britannia's harsh, racist reign. So Lelouch made sure to space encounters with Suzaku apart, out of habit, to fend off alert and suspicion. It worked rather well… at first.

The more they were alone together, the more Lelouch felt sure he grew addicted to Suzaku. It wasn't a quality he approved of in people, addiction. In fact, Lelouch felt stricken by it. Longing for one thing that much…. It was weak, and Lelouch's mind couldn't accept it. He ought to have been able to multitask, on higher levels than the average student. He didn't want to die because he daydreamed all about—

Well, about  _things_. Things he couldn't deny now.

For a good four days, he delayed meeting Suzaku. Yet Lelouch failed to focus on anything in the meantime. C.C. even commented that he grew sloppy. Careless. Lazy. And that he sent the Black Knights on too many pointless missions.

"You let me order fifteen pizzas, too," she said, but Lelouch hardly listened. "You didn't even notice. Probably because, just a few hours before, that pretty Kururugi had his hands stuffed up your shirt—"

"Follow Tamaki tonight, if you like watching people kiss. He's still blowing money in the ghetto brothels." He hadn't even yelled it, though. Instead Lelouch thought about his schedule, and when he might see Suzaku next.

That was how he fell in deeper than he knew he ought to go.

Nearly every other afternoon now brought Lelouch to where he kissed Suzaku, wildly, deeply, like he would never possess Suzaku enough. He shoved hands into Suzaku's hair, and tugged him whatever which way he desired, and took until Suzaku was left panting, hugging Lelouch around the middle to keep him close. Lelouch drank, every time, of his taste, as if he were an eternally thirsty being.

Rough and commanding and fast, and all breathless. Suzaku's crisp and rugged outdoor scent pervaded. Lips a bit chapped often, after the kisses. But hell if Lelouch ever, ever dared cease it.

"Lelouch," Suzaku managed, gasping, in a rare instant when Lelouch let him breathe, one afternoon on his couch. "Can I ask something?"

"I'd rather not pause." Lelouch looked hungrily on his target. Askew collar. Ruffled hair. A sheen of perspiration and a flush, adding texture and color to Suzaku's face.

Desire incarnate. He wanted and wanted.

"When do we define this?"

It made Lelouch pause after all. "Define, 'define.'" He tried not to frown and rocked back on the cushions.

Suzaku said, "This new level of our relationship." And, unexpectedly, he looked embarrassed.

Lelouch restrained the carnal part of himself, in favor of analysis. "Is there a serious need to define it? If you mean whether it's gay, it's obvious now there's that factor. I don't want you  _just_  for the person you are. Your body itself is a strong element." He raked a hand down Suzaku's chest and abdomen and made Suzaku shudder.

Suzaku found it hard to speak. "Yes. Yes, I know. I feel the same. I also understand that you just meant to give a compliment. But. I-I meant more of an emotional definition. A label, for the others. Is this relationship—"

"No, this isn't a relationship, Suzaku."

It was the one point Lelouch knew he felt the clearest on. Suzaku snapped his mouth shut, looking anxious and expectant.

Lelouch said, "It's friendship, like it's always been. You're my friend. My first one - and therefore most important. There isn't a need to define it more than that."

Suzaku found the carpet and looked down, as if reflecting.

Relationships were cheap and almost trivial, Lelouch believed. Men threw their wives and their lovers away. Women ran off in the flash of an instant when someone more suitable deemed to walk by. Defining someone as a significant other meant nothing but staking a claim on their whole. It meant itemizing a living creature, out of emotions like selfishness. Greed. Out of lust that had no merit, because in the end, it was just a kind of over-eating from the luscious plate of life. A prideful indulgence, claiming someone... and also, it was the mark of a status. Status was for people who were cruel, and biased, and felt a need to differentiate themselves from those they thought were lesser. It did not mean the things Lelouch felt for Suzaku.

Suzaku was precious to him as a person, not as a possession. Suzaku was his friend.

"I don't think normal friends usually do this."

"Then we'll define the category first, ourselves," Lelouch insisted.

Lelouch was annoyed. Suzaku had drawn up on the couch, and all Lelouch wanted to do was keep kissing. What was Suzaku so desperate to express?

It hit him. "Are you asking if we two can be called 'lovers?'"

Eyes shifted further. Flushing. Tiny fidgets. "Well..."

"I don't love you," Lelouch announced bluntly. Suzaku's face fell swiftly blank. "I don't love anyone. Nobody but Nunnally, my dearly beloved sister. Love is something dangerous, Suzaku, that people fight for. Love quite nearly made me sick when Mao captured her."

"I—"

"I don't feel it for you. And I never want to."

"That's not what I was asking! It's too soon to really—"

"I have confidence in you, so I know I'll never worry. I'm not scared we'll go wrong. It isn't love, Suzaku. What it is is trust. This is the deepest trust existing. People have it with their friends, and I refuse to throw that trust away for something volatile."

He didn't mean his voice to pick up so much feeling. It was rigid.

"But you forget – there's desire, Lelouch."

"Oh, no, Suzaku. I don't forget that." Lelouch gripped Suzaku's thighs, and held his gaze with a look that said he knew  _exactly_  what they two were doing. "Don't we have the right to want whoever we may want? Even our friends?" Suzaku's mouth made a soft line. "Especially friends." Lelouch glided his hands a little higher up Suzaku's firm thighs.

Suzaku gently took Lelouch's wrists and lifted him away.

"Relationship, Lelouch," he whispered. "Opening doors for you. Holding your hand. Telling the others that I'll put you first." Despite his show of control, his gaze wandered Lelouch's body. Jade now darkened into compassion. "That's what I mean, when I ask about this."

"Holding hands... like I do for Nunnally? You still don't make any sense." Lelouch crossed his arms and sighed. "It's tiring. I don't need your guidance; I told you. Opening doors... like you'd do for Euphy? I'm not a responsibility that you need to attend to. Don't start to irk me by assigning us unequal roles."

"Euphy?" Suzaku appeared shocked that Lelouch would bring her up. "I met with her only that once."

"Yet she sent you to school, right after that. And you've mentioned she's good to you."

"I like her, Lelouch. I do. A lot. But she's got nothing to do with—"

"We're friends." Suzaku fell silent when Lelouch announced it. "I'm not like she is to you. Accept it now. You can stay at my house. I'll allow you to touch me. If you need stricter rules to follow, don't kiss anyone other than me. But that's all, Suzaku. Don't change. Don't change anything at all. You and I, the way we are..." Lelouch wanted to trace Suzaku's collarbone. Instead he looked away, frowning and flushing. "This is what I want. Just this."

And he'd do anything to keep it. Even make Zero disappear for days and days.

"Okay," Suzaku said. "Okay. I understand. Don't look so disturbed; I don't think I can stand it." He frowned a little bit himself. "And don't say strange things about Euphy."

"Princess Euphemia," Lelouch replied, allowing it to be taken as chastisement or as teasing, whatever way Suzaku liked. His mind strayed elsewhere. Intimacy… it was tricky.

"Right. Princess Euphy." Suzaku frowned, still distracted. "When do we take this past kissing, at least?"

Lelouch sat back. The question had been modest. There was no pressure, suggestion, or hunger. Suzaku's thoughts weren't on it, in the end; he was content the way they were for now. He simply thought about it due to concern for conventions. Worried about images.

Lelouch, helplessly devious and coy when it came to Suzaku, only thought of implications.

"Well," he said, swallowing thickly, feeling himself lift in light, bubbly ways. He'd try to ease Suzaku's mood. "Whenever you want it, Suzaku, I'll allow it."

He simply couldn't help himself. He trailed long fingers against Suzaku's—

"Ahn!" Suzaku clapped a hand over his mouth, shining as pink as a new-grown strawberry. He moaned around his palm. "Le _louch_..."

That was how new ground was trod. Little by little, and never too fast.

"Is it pleasant?" Lelouch rubbed. "Do you want it right now?"

"God—"

But he did not unbutton Suzaku's pants.

Thus, the afternoons went on. It seemed, after a time, that Suzaku ached for more, but chose instead to keep taking it slow. In case the military called. Or Nunnally rolled in. Or they otherwise were compromised, like so many times they had—

"Lelou~!" Milly called, for him to help her out with council work.

Lelouch decided once and for all that the two of them needed a place completely private. Yet whenever Suzaku asked about Lelouch's room, Lelouch had to divert him. C.C., and all her pizza boxes...! Bad enough Nunnally thought Lelouch was the one getting fat.

C.C. made sure to comment on his shifting priorities and his awful personality.  _If you took over the world, it wouldn't be for your sister, would it, Lelouch. It would be so you could lie around in bed with_ him _all day. What an advantage it is to be young, and still believe that life was made for pleasure…._

Lelouch thought she wasn't wrong.

He reflected, between Zero's meetings, on all the ideas Suzaku had been expressing. About their desire, and friendship, and closeness. He watched Suzaku tempt out Nunnally's laughter, over and over, like his sister were a bubbling fountain. Suzaku said he treasured all the time they spent together. His chemistry with Nunnally, even after seven years, had failed to change – a point Lelouch appreciated more than he'd ever let on. At the tea table one day, Lelouch added the final touches to his plan. The one he'd tried to come up with ever since he'd confirmed Suzaku's attraction.

"You two get along quite well."

"Like always," Nunnally said, and grinned. Suzaku laughed softly and said, "She's right, Lelouch. I almost like her more than you."

His light tone teased. His eyes said something else. It wasn't the place for Suzaku to express how much he ached after Lelouch, but Lelouch felt warmed by his friend's effort to please and flatter them both nonetheless.

"Please continue your game together, then."

He mused. Suzaku couldn't be Nunnally's bodyguard. It would be too suspicious to appoint Nunnally one, anyhow; someone might suspect her true identity as an important personage. Besides that, Suzaku had given himself to the military.  _Two_  jobs were out of the question. As it was, Suzaku was failing recently to master his studies. And even if Lelouch could have claimed status as a prince, no one would let him name Suzaku – a Number – as his sister's sole protector. No – Suzaku could never be a knight, or a bodyguard, or hold any station near it.

But he could continue to be a good friend.

Lelouch would deepen their relationship. Beyond time at the clubhouse, beyond locked lips and satisfaction. Such an increased, intense friendship, though, required a formal proposal. Almost like a royal ceremony, thought Lelouch, only there'd be no audience. It'd be the two of them, alone together.

Lelouch would ask Suzaku to stay by their sides. Together for always. For Nunnally's sake. Nunnally needed Suzaku as protector, and if Suzaku agreed, Lelouch could tell his sister about their shared attraction, and they'd coexist together like a happy family.

They sat there, with their origami, while Suzaku started making noises like a frog. Nunnally giggled.

Lelouch decided there was no time like the present to begin to launch his plan.

Just then, Suzaku's tall, female superior jogged up. She looked a little haggard, but Lelouch thought she was pretty. It struck him that Suzaku had such a good-looking coworker; he wondered if Suzaku worked with very many more. Then, he almost kicked himself. It really didn't matter. When Suzaku wasn't with the army, Suzaku came to  _him_.

_Jealousy is nothing like me. I should stop. It's a waste of energy._

Suzaku had to leave. Right then.

Lelouch decided instantly to revoke his self-scolding. Yes, his jealousy was merited. And he had lots of energy. Lelouch stood up abruptly, causing Nunnally to turn.

"When you come back…" Lelouch began.

Suzaku laughed a little, and told him the request sounded like it'd be scary.

 _But really,_ Lelouch thought, watching Suzaku go,  _the scary thing is that you're Britannia's dog._

He helped Nunnally to carry in her papers. Then he went to see C.C.

Lelouch was unnerved to find her at his laptop, scrolling through his hidden data with all files open.

"How did you manage that, witch?" he demanded. "I trust you after Narita, but that doesn't just mean I'll—"

"So then," C.C. cut him off, in monotone. "Zero has no interest in rescuing Tohdoh, that miracle man, before it's too late? You lied to his four holy comrades?" She went on to tell him about Tohdoh's execution schedule.

Lelouch agreed that they couldn't stand by. The Black Knights went in that night, confident in numbers. Lelouch knew exactly how to motivate a man so very like a samurai. The path was straight and true. He didn't need Tohdoh's Four Holy Blades to guarantee Tohdoh's cooperation. But after his speech in which Tohdoh came over, Zero felt inflated indeed to have Tohdoh – and his Four Blades – charging the battlefield with Kallen.

All in all, an easy operation. Even the path to Tohdoh's cell had been cleared, just like child's play. And despite that damned, white-headed Knightmare Frame that showed up everywhere….

Tohdoh sheared the cockpit open and revealed its pilot.

The result broke Lelouch's mind, like a light bulb that had burst.

No… he didn't leave his Burai, after the truth rent him speechless that night. He didn't react, for a very long time. He ceased even to feel. Or perhaps the things he felt were cold and emptiness. Hollowness, in which the silence cried and screamed at him. Except, eventually, Lelouch laughed.

C.C. was the one to finally force him into bed.

"Did you know, at Narita, C.C., when you walked up and touched it?!"

"Stop acting like a selfish child. Go to bed."

"All this time, C.C., in all these battles—!"

"I told you that to walk the path of kings meant isolation. Take the victories you have and don't cry over spilled milk, Lelouch."

Suzaku was anything but mere spilled milk. He fisted the sheets that C.C. wrapped around him, grim, and begged silently of the gods.  _If this is true, then allow me to reverse it._ He'd give it up, Geass. His plan. All his vengeance. He'd take Nunnally and Suzaku far away, to a distant rural place. He'd—

No. He wouldn't.

Silence.

No. Lelouch was Zero.

He'd become that for a reason. Not even the naïveté or resistance of his dearest friend would stop him; he knew it with firm, fast conviction. Too late to reverse it, once blood had been shed.

Lelouch at last fell frightfully quiet. Anger and resentment boiled in him like a black concoction, filling all the crags inside him no one else could see. Despite it, his mind began ticking afresh, to think if it couldn't turn fate to his sweet benefit.

"You've upset the bed."

She'd already yanked Lelouch's shirt off for him. Smoothed his hair.

It struck Lelouch that he reclined, bare, stripped from the waist up, under his temper-rumpled covers. A beautiful woman leaned over him, a vision even with her harsh, pale expression. Her actions weren't intimate. They were purposeful, helpful. Elegant, even. She moved like a fairy more than a cruel witch.

"Thank you, C.C." He didn't face her as he said it.

Others would kill for his position. Their own lovely enchantress, to grace their bedside and give hard advice? Men so needed that power – especially when they'd been kicked to the ground.

That was why Lelouch would keep on using what she'd given.

Geass. For men who would be kings and shift the world.

Even if the cost of its power became like an opponent in a game of chess he couldn't win, Lelouch would keep on playing the game, until he lost it. If he couldn't at least do that much, he would rather die. He'd welcome death. Life with no control, with no free will…. He'd told C.C. he'd end it.

In the end, Lelouch was Lelouch. Not even Suzaku revealed in his flight suit could damage the nerve that Lelouch relied on. When Diethard Ried alerted him that Euphemia li Britannia had named herself a knight, Lelouch just cocked his head and said, "Oh? I see. The princess becomes bold."

His nature was made of a curdling fury. Of cold calculation, and star lead-role acting. Even now, he burned too hot to lose. Lelouch would endure.

He called Suzaku on his phone.

"I heard," he said. "Congratulations."

"You heard? Already? Sh-sheesh, what a pain."

"Is it a pain, to be knight to the princess?"

"A pain that I couldn't tell you this myself."

Suzaku's voice, though cool, carried annoyance. Lelouch overall found him rather together. He wanted to shake him. Demand, tonelessly,  _Why did you agree?_ Or worse, he'd cry,  _Did they even allow you a choice? You're so stupid. Why are you this stupid, Suzaku?_ If Suzaku had never joined the military, this would not have happened. Suzaku had zero foresight.

But more than blame honest Suzaku, Lelouch blamed and despised Euphemia. Hated her, at least right then – for her selfish, reckless, brilliant move. Why had she secured Suzaku Kururugi? Why, instead of him? She'd taken him right out from under Lelouch's careful nose.

They really were relatives, weren't they.

The problem was that now Suzaku's peril would expand. Because Euphy had made a young Eleven her first knight, Suzaku was in more danger than he'd ever been before. Lelouch hoped that Suzaku's raised status and Euphemia's endorsements might at least provide more freedom… but respect, for Suzaku, would now never be won. Soldiers would resent him. Nobles would scorn him. An angry Japanese might want to kill him.

Lelouch kept all his thoughts inside.

"It's business," he said, into the receiver, "right? You aren't required to tell me your career decisions ahead of time." He kept his tone cool, bored, and light.

A silence passed. Then Suzaku said, "My God, Lelouch. You're furious."

_Tch._

"Furious," he exclaimed, "isn't quite the proper word."

Suzaku said, "Livid? Apoplectic? Incensed?"

He'd studied for his next English vocabulary quiz.

"You fool," Lelouch whispered. He wanted to weep. He tied his mental mask on even tighter. "I'm proud of you." He lied. "This is a stellar achievement, at your station. I don't know what you did to make my half-sister adore you, but her reasons are in all probability very much like Nunnally's. I mean it, Suzaku. Congratulations. You'll make a…." He faltered. "A beautiful knight."  _Beautiful._ A perfect, painful word. And at least the part about Euphy's feelings for Suzaku were true. "If you really don't mind becoming her knight and taking on those duties, then you know that I'll support you."

"Really?" Suzaku's breath filled up the earpiece. The boy was relieved. Lelouch tried not to let it hurt. But then, as if at once recalling something else, Suzaku's tone grew tense again.

"When they showed me on the TV station, inside Lancelot… did that…?"

Lelouch's clenching hand very nearly crushed his cell phone. The pain, however, failed to taint his voice – the way he wanted it. "As for that, my concern for your safety is indescribable, Suzaku. But I'd be willing to believe it, if you told me you thought hard about that decision."

He could feel Suzaku cringe. "Ah, well, that. Um… it wasn't a decision. I was the best part they had. I-It's like—"

"You told me you were on the research team. Remember?"

"It—it is research. I didn't lie."

"Experimental piloting?" Lelouch let his voice lift. "Your life is on the line, so they can test and collect data?" He would kill them, maybe. All of them. All Lelouch needed was one more excuse.

"That's—"

A knock sounded on Zero's door. Lelouch hooked an index finger inside his inner facemask, poised to pull it up again to conceal his nose and mouth. "Later," he said to Suzaku, swiftly. Was it Ohgi knocking, or Diethard? Maybe Kallen. "I want to see you again, when you can. Until then, my deepest felicitations for your knighthood stand."

He realized too late that he'd spoken formally. The knocking had re-sounded; his mind had slipped – out of necessity – straight into Zero's.

If Suzaku found the vocal shift odd, he uttered nothing. He said, "I'll be back soon. I'll come to school again after the ceremony."

"Very well." Lelouch hung up the call. He donned his helmet just in time.

His door hissed open. Diethard entered.

"I didn't think the Black Knights were so crude they couldn't wait for Zero to respond to a knock."

"It's important," Diethard told him, "and I happened to hear the sound of your voice. I borrowed Ohgi's access code to enter. Pardon me for the intrusion, but matters have taken a disturbing turn."

"'Borrowed' Ohgi's code?" asked Zero, darkly. "I was on a private call. Don't step beyond your place, Diethard, or the results will be unpleasant."

"My apologies to you again, but it's necessary to discuss the Kururugi issue."

Lelouch moved not one muscle.

"Kyoto was on the line moments ago. They're desperately curious about how we intend to act regarding him."

Lelouch let Diethard stand there, while he snapped his gloves to readjust them. "Everyone is curious, Diethard. That is human nature at its simplest. Allow their curiosity, but don't be flustered by it. They know they'll only fail if they intend to try for pressure."

Kirihara perhaps wanted to allow his men to vent frustration. Old man…. Clever, but still an ancient relic.

"It's not just about Kyoto, Zero. It's your Black Knights who are curious the most. They know you've taken special interest in Kururugi, since his arrest. They want to know how they're supposed to act after this point, since he's so clearly now denied you." Lelouch didn't let Diethard notice him flinch. "Kyoto simply gives them an excuse to raise discussion. But, Zero, allow me to say… that if discussion waits too long, some of them may take their actions into their own hands."

Diethard was hiding something. Lelouch didn't like it.

"Some of them?" Zero echoed. "Or you would?"

Diethard, wisely, answered him with silence. Lelouch considered, from within the safety of his helmet. Who was most in danger, if Lelouch failed to act quickly? Kallen had been greatly shaken, to find Suzaku piloted the Knightmare she'd been battling. Others, like Ohgi, might sense her disquiet, and interpret it to mean that waiting for Zero's order too long was a poor decision. But would they dare to disobey him?

Lelouch said, "We'll hold a meeting." He needed to buy himself some time.

Diethard said, upon the meeting, they should try assassination.

Later on, C.C. lied down and asked, "If you won't kill him, then why don't you use the Geass? It's simple. You can't? What is it – stubbornness? Friendship? Pride?"

 _All of them_ , Lelouch gritted.

He went back to school for Suzaku's party, the one Nunnally had insisted on hosting. "I'm happy for Suzaku," she'd said, despite that her own half-sibling had stolen Suzaku's loyalty from her. Realities like that made Lelouch want to be sick.

The sickness went away when he caught Kallen by the wrist. He stared at her pink pouch, with its gleaming, secret knife, and thought,  _You'd really kill him for the sake of Zero, Kallen, wouldn't you._

He wasn't frustrated with her. Besides, surely someone else had put Kallen up to the assassination. Lelouch blamed only himself for how she'd undermined her much-admired idol. He'd let Zero's command fall slack so deeply that this fatal slip occurred.

Suzaku walked up to him. Lelouch thought,  _This damn pit is getting too deep. I'll get you out. I swear it, Suzaku, for Nunnally's sake._ And… for his own sake, he knew.

For the cursed way his blood caught fire, simply looking on Suzaku's tousled hair.

Suzaku smiled. Lelouch felt possessive. Fiercely, sharply, violently determined. Suzaku would be his. Somehow. Some way. His, if Lelouch had to heave up the whole Tokyo Settlement to get it. He wanted Suzaku – and wanted him hard – in a way that no longer focused simply on the sexual. The way he'd wanted Suzaku from the beginning resurfaced. Suzaku should be his ally in his fight for equality and justice.

But the sexual aspect was what drew in Suzaku. Lelouch dismissed serious conversation, when Suzaku reminded him that he'd had an important matter to discuss.

Instead, they fell to assessing each other. Suzaku's eyes roved Lelouch's body, darkening mischievously. Lelouch did not have need to fake his own expression; he determined the encounter with Tohdoh had left Suzaku physically unharmed, and healthy, so he smiled.

"What are you up to tonight?" Suzaku asked.

Lelouch answered, "Not had enough celebration?"

"As a matter of fact, Lelouch, I—"

And Earl Asplund came in, with Nina at his hip – his odd researcher-fannypack. Milly looked hassled, and Rivalz went mad, so Suzaku took off to the rescue at once.

 _This is how easy_ , Lelouch mused, bitter,  _it is to lose track of a thing that you want._

Before Suzaku left again, he snagged Lelouch's arm. "A rain check on our date?" he said.

"It isn't raining. And it's not—"

"—a date. I knew you'd say that. You were pouting a bit." It seemed like he'd lean in to kiss Lelouch's cheek.

He didn't. Suzaku left, with a distracted wave, leaving Lelouch dizzy for just a moment.

The level of the loss was small, but the knowledge didn't stop the daggers in Lelouch's chest.


	5. Euphemia

The Gawain was his consolation prize.

Lelouch told himself those words over and over, battening down the Knightmare Frame aboard the submarine. Kallen leapt limberly into Ohgi's arms, and her lips flooded stories that Lelouch didn't deny. Lelouch didn't know if Kallen's nerves had finally calmed, or if adrenaline still ruled, and that explained her fountain-talk. In any case, Zero allowed her excitement to flow — and even looked aside to let her whack Tamaki twice, when Tamaki suggested that her nakedness alone was what had kept Suzaku from killing her.

Suzaku. God, Lelouch had gone and used—

The Gawain was his consolation prize.

"Anyway, Zero was brilliant! Really brilliant! The way he managed those controls—"

"The brilliant one was you, Kallen." While Zero watched, and as his ace begin to flush, Ohgi slipped up quietly and asked him what had really happened on that island.

The truth was, Lelouch didn't know. Suzaku's reactions had been well beyond control. And worse, to meet Euphemia again, and reveal his identity only to hear her wish they could go back to being children...

What the hell had Lelouch done?

C.C. said it best, when he came back into his quarters, after she was finished calling Tamaki bad names. "You're selfish and a coward," she said. Lelouch couldn't reply.

She asked him for a pizza. He gave her the telephone.

"Order it for when we're back on land," he said. Then he added, "I did it for  _him_."

C.C. made him repeat himself.

"I did it for Suzaku's sake, C.C.."

"No, about the pizza. One more time." But she sat up, and watched him with her sharp gold eyes.

"I couldn't let him die," Lelouch announced. "Even if he's Euphie's knight, I need him here for Nunnally. As well, I need him here for me. If he wants to die, then I'll give him reasons to live, and if a reason isn't good enough... Then yes, C.C., I'll simply force his life. I can't lose. Even if it is cowardly. Selfish."

"You stole his will. You must know that he won't forgive you."

"If he can't, I'll be prepared for that."

"What about your romantic involvement with him? If he learns—"

"Then that's a cross I'll have to bear!" The hanger for his Zero suit went flying from the closet. A moment later, Lelouch bent and picked it up.

He said, "At least Lakshata's making use of our new Gawain. Get up and do something here yourself. Teach Tamaki another lesson." Lelouch mumbled, "That guy needs it."

C.C. didn't move for a long time. Lelouch stripped down and headed for the shower.

When the Chinese Federation butted its nose where it didn't belong, and it became time to raid the Fukuoka Base, Lelouch had already made up his mind.

He didn't care if Suzaku could forgive him. Lelouch would rescue him, again and again.

And so, Lelouch kept to his decision. He used the Hadron canons on the Gawain to melt the Lancelot's attackers. He gave Suzaku's Knightmare Frame a new energy filler, kneeling the Gawain down to offer the gift, as if he were a knight just like Suzaku. Lelouch didn't readily concede to partner-work, or like indebting himself, but this was different. This was for Suzaku. There was nothing he and Suzaku could not achieve together.

Even if Suzaku didn't know Zero was him, Lelouch would wait, and lend his help. Lelouch would keep Suzaku near. He'd watch and sweep in, again and again, to save Suzaku Kururugi's life.

Lelouch could be a patient man. He'd win Suzaku over, in time.

Kyuushu was a great success, and life returned to normal after that. As normal, at least, as Ashford would allow.

Lelouch had to find Suzaku, at the start of another school festival. This one was open to the public, and Elevens, and Milly had him running duties in circles. Zero had to stay on call as well. Media insects were crawling around, and Lelouch hardly had time to spend with Nunnally, but relief made him complacent. Zero's life was improving again. Lelouch felt optimistic; there'd been gains that he could see. Nothing else would hold him down.

Not even that Suzaku frowned when Lelouch walked up.

"Is it about the pizza?" Suzaku asked, as he leaned against a tree in the shade. The shadows made his face look grim. Open books balanced in each of his hands. "I'm refreshing about the Ganymede's controls right now. Don't worry, I'm going to make sure the act is flawless."

"There's so much about you that's flawless, Suzaku, I doubt that you could ruin pizza."

Suzaku closed the books. He looked down at his feet and deeply sighed. The reaction was not what Lelouch expected. He thought perhaps that Suzaku could use a hug. Both of them could, possibly. Wasn't a hug to celebrate? They had much to be grateful for, despite the messes Zero and Suzaku had gotten in of late. Suzaku was  _alive_. And though Zero had seen him, many times, Lelouch had not. For ages.

His whole body could feel that. He longed after a physical reunion.

Suzaku said, "Um."

Lelouch repeated, "Um?"

If he hadn't been so intent on preserving Suzaku's life, in the cockpit of the Lancelot when they'd told him to die to capture Zero… something else would have occurred inside that cockpit, Lelouch was quite sure. And god, it felt so nice to have the luxury again of reckless thoughts like that again.

"I've missed you, Suzaku." He moved for the embrace.

Suzaku stepped back. Then he dropped his books. Flinched.

"What is it?"

"I'm sorry. I just— No, let me get those. I'm the one who dropped them."

"You're worried what the school will think still, if we're caught together?"

"No."

Lelouch gave Suzaku his book, and refused to overanalyze. Maybe Suzaku didn't feel well today. Maybe Nunnally or Sayoko could help with medicine. Or—

"Is it stress?" Lelouch asked, suddenly. "Is there too much that's on your mind?" Perhaps Suzaku couldn't think of intimacy while he was distracted by outside events.

Suzaku's face dropped. Then Lelouch knew. 'Too much' was still understatement.

"I gave Euphy her emblem back," said Suzaku, pacing a circle around the tree. "I quit knighthood. I got sunburned on an island, and I injured the Lancelot, somehow, getting there. Before that, Zero came along, and slipped right through my fingertips. His methods were despicable. Except he won. I broke the rules—"

"Stop, Suzaku. Slow down."

"—and something's wrong with me, after it. Wrong. It's started to affect the people I was on good terms with. Cécile is feeding me even worse food. Cornelia either favors me by now or wants me dead, and I can't tell which any more. Everyone else... they look at me strangely. With hatred. Suspicion. Much worse than before. It's not that I mind taking my share of abuse, but... I disgraced myself, in their eyes. I disgraced myself in  _mine_. The tests they're doing because of my failures make me have to change my exercise routine. That was what kept me focused. I keep thinking of my father."

"Suzaku."

"And then I worked with Zero, Lelouch! With Zero, the person I really can't stand! We took people down. I thought it was right, because our goals were the same at the time. But I still know his methods overall are wrong, so I'm sick with myself for the way I caved in. Euphy gave me her emblem back... so I belong to her again. I accepted it, because her efforts are pure, and I want her success so that this Area will thrive. I like her, Lelouch, but somehow, still... I don't feel right. It's like my resolve—"

Lelouch abruptly seized and hugged him.

Suzaku stopped his pacing, then. "Is it really that bad?" he asked, in a whisper. "I-I'm sorry. It's not; I shouldn't have made such a fuss. You don't have to..."

"Let me bear the pain. Or some of it." His throat burned, saying the words.

Lelouch's hands trembled. He laced his fingers in Suzaku's hair. He didn't relent, even when Suzaku squirmed. He felt Suzaku glance around them and falter, making excuses and apologizing more. After a time, though, Suzaku relaxed, and Lelouch just held him, wishing he could crush the pain.

Lelouch only let go when two passing girl students squealed. He stepped back, smoothing his uniform. The sun wasn't hot, but his face heated up. He coughed. Suzaku said hi to them.

When the girls were gone, Suzaku rolled his shoulders. He looked upon Lelouch as if he'd seen a magician's trick. "You know, I feel better," he said, marveling.

"Physical contact can often heal an injured psyche."

"Injured psyche?" Suzaku ruffled his hair. "Isn't that too a bit too far?"

"You're the one who said that there was something wrong with you. If you ask me, though, it seems you're better than before. You've been too reckless, Suzaku. You could have even died."

Suzaku winced.

"It's good that you found a strong reason to live, and came back here to Nunnally and I." Lelouch only had to force his smile a little. "Good that, again, Zero saved you from death. I'm beginning to think that I owe him something."

"Speaking of that," Suzaku said, "I doubt he can help with our school festival. I'll be dead another time, if I don't get this pizza right."

"Don't joke," Lelouch said, resisting the urge for a kiss. It was broad daylight, at a festival, and people toted cameras, but his want was overflowing.

Suzaku grinned. Milly buzzed Lelouch's headset. Tasks were meted out, executed, and more were established. Lelouch ran back and forth like mad, and got surprised to find Kallen had dragged herself to school.

An incident in the storage room occurred. To think even Oghi had shown up in there...

C.C.'s fault. Lelouch used pink gas, leftover from the Pride Day stock. In the end, Lelouch enjoyed himself. If he messed up, he'd cause no casualties involving death.

Then Euphemia showed up.

It wasn't that Lelouch never wanted to see her. Well, he  _didn't_ , but she was his sister. He'd never act cruelly or turn her away, especially not when Nunnally enjoyed her company. In a way, Lelouch enjoyed it too. Euphie was sweet like a bite of white cake.

But this kind of incident couldn't go on. Zero could never support Euphie's methods.

Lelouch sat on the steps and they talked. How to convey his conflicted opinions? He ended up just focusing on Euphie's quiet merits. What did Suzaku like most about her? Her innocence? Her sense of humor, or her boldness? It couldn't be the incessantly formal way she spoke, ever inch the flowery princess.

Or was it? Suzaku was too accepting of Britannia's race and class distinctions, and slightly, sickly hungry for all kinds of degradation.

Lelouch's train of thought chugged that direction. He wondered, vaguely, if he should tap into that masochism of Suzaku's in a sexual sense. Imagine that kind of control, used for the sake of satisfaction, pleasure…. But Lelouch shook his head and focused on his conversation.

He should be striving hard to force the Britannia out of the soldier, so long as the soldier refused to be forced out of Britannia.

A gust of wind blew hard, revealing Euphie's hidden presence. The following jostle ratcheted Lelouch's heart rate up.

Running was rough, and even rougher while gripping the handles of Nunnally's wheelchair. He ducked them both inside a booth, and it was there that Lelouch came to an anxious realization, scanning Nunnally's face when she exclaimed that Suzaku and Euphie made a lovely couple.

They could never, ever go back to the past, but also… it wasn't safe to bring the past forward beside them.

For Britannia to change, the only way to move was surely, marching in a line and going forward, just like time did. That was why Euphie's Special Administrative Zone of Japan was doomed to fail. Acknowledging Japan, when Japan was in the past, or trying to allow the Japanese to keep their title…. The world would never have that old Japan it craved again. Japan had  _died_ , and what presided now was different. Or it would  _become_  different, for the sake of moving on. The past helped formed the future, yes, but only because people ought to learn from it. Lelouch believed that to charge forward, there were very few paths that  _didn't_  require leaving a host of ideas, places, and people behind.

Lelouch and Nunnally had two pasts. One was with Euphemia, with whom they had played in the gardens with Marianne. The other had begun when royal life was tossed aside; the other past involved Suzaku, who'd taught them about friendship at the shrine. Neither past could be regained. That much had been obvious ever since Suzaku had shown himself years later, a soldier of Britannia before a capsule full of 'poison gas.' The bond they'd had when they were kids could never be regained, and if Suzaku were to move with Lelouch toward the future, it would have to be admitted that the movement would be changed. Lelouch understood bits would be left behind.

Euphemia li Britannia didn't. She  _tried_  to look toward the future, but her vision wasn't far enough, and her toes still dipped in the past.

Lelouch watched Euphie give her speech, wondering how their present lives had come to this. He couldn't accept that Euphie sought to consolidate the separate things she cared about, using her Administrative Zone as cover. She hadn't considered consequences for the masses. Deep down, Lelouch too had a desire to pull all hispasts and all his beloved friends together, but at least he knew that such a life was just a pipedream. He couldn't say Euphie's intentions were bad. Who didn't wish for an ideal situation? If Lelouch could have both Suzaku and Euphie on his side… wouldn't that be grand. Yes, grand. At least for him.

Not for Nunnally. Not for the world. It was naïve.

"Nunnally, you…." Lelouch held her hand and understood her secret feelings.

To move forward with both Euphie and Suzaku would sow discord deep within his sister's soul. While Suzaku may adore Euphie, and Nunnally may adore both Euphie and Suzaku, Suzaku's closeness to Euphie still affected Nunnally.

Nunnally wished to be Suzaku's primary someone, his reason to smile, to laugh, and to live. Lelouch wanted to let her be that person. He'd wanted that from the very beginning. His sexual foray with Suzaku would not get in the way, he thought. Nunnally wouldn't be jealous about such closeness, when Lelouch finally deigned to talk about it. Nunnally was too pure for that naughtiness herself; she would be happy holding hands with Suzaku and exchanging feathered cheek-kisses. She would be happy that Lelouch was happy and satisfied by Suzaku's… attentions. But she did desire someone who could give her companionship, when Lelouch couldn't. That was why….

If Nunnally couldn't bear to see Suzaku giving that care to Euphemia instead... Lelouch would never let it happen — past, present, or future.

Thus, Euphie's naïveté regarding the political aspect of her Administrative Zone was only part of it. Lelouch had an even clearer reason why he could not wind Euphie back into his life. Why Zero could not ever partner with her.

Euphie stood there, posed in Ganymede's hand, and Lelouch made a choice about what Zero would say, if he had to answer her address to him.

When hysteria was over, and Euphemia had gone, Suzaku jumped down from Ganymede. He said, "Oh god. Oh no. The pizza."

Nunnally laughed. They talked about Euphie's proposal. Lelouch looked in vain for C.C., near the pine tree draped in pizza dough. A laughing Suzaku pulled him back, to ask about his dinner plans.

Lelouch had never seen Suzaku so relaxed, so enormously elated, as he was when they met back up in the storage room that evening.

Quiet blanketed the campus now. The public had at last dispersed. Only the smell of popcorn and fried dough wafted faintly in their wake. Lelouch had trailed some crushed confetti in along the concrete floor, but the festival was the last event now on his pleasure-melted mind.

"I feel better," Suzaku said. "Much better." He kissed Lelouch's jaw line, persistent. "With this, Euphie thinks Zero will—"

"I was there. I heard her. Don't stop."

His jacket sat strewn on a heap of blue tarps. His shirt flapped open like a sail. Suzaku's hand trailed his pale, bare skin, and if he wasn't given more…. Lelouch feared what he'd do to demand satisfaction.

"But Lelouch, like I said, I worked with Zero. Euphie thinks that she can, too. Don't you understand? I won't feel bad, if Zero can make his methods match hers. And mine. He can try to redeem himself. Then things like Shirley's father won't…."

"Suzaku," Lelouch just groaned. Suzaku shut up long enough to lap and kiss his collarbone.

Yes, if they could work together, in some world of dreams, there would be bliss. Lelouch would have preferred it. Suzaku, Euphie, and Zero. But this world was Britannia. Emperor Charles reigned, and undeniably corrupted.

"What do you think this is?" Lelouch intoned.

"Huh?" Suzaku pulled away and blinked at him. His eyes were pleasure-clouded, his lips parted and moist. Lelouch took the sight in and moaned. "This is us touching a lot, in the storehouse where we shouldn't. You're really, really,  _really_ hard."

Lelouch, to his credit, didn't flush for once. "You, too."

"I want some more," Suzaku said huskily. He brushed a thumb across Lelouch's nipple.

Lelouch cried out and arched his back. Suzaku's touch short-circuited his mind. He couldn't think, but somehow he managed, "If you could just stop mentioning Euphemia…."

"I like her, though." Hot sliding against skin. Suzaku's mouth along his chest. His tongue twirled, hard against the nipple he'd made pert, which made Lelouch's hips jerk — and the back of his throat vibrate when he whined.

Suzaku looked surprised, and then he seized Lelouch's hips, using them to steer Lelouch into a wall of boxes. "Not yet."

"She's… my half-sister," Lelouch said, to give himself something to focus on besides desire. He fisted his hand in Suzaku's clothing. "You can't—"

"Lelouch, it's not like that. At least, I still don't think so. I think she is to me what Nunnally is to you."

Suzaku unbuttoned his pants.

"Aah!" Lelouch's grip tightened on Suzaku's shoulders. The palm of Suzaku's hand began to press, through black pant-fabric, rubbing and stroking. He twisted the angle just right, working his wrist. Lelouch choked on a gasp and his knees began to weaken.

"I want to do horrible things to you," said Suzaku. His voice dropped low.

"That's—Suzaku, ah,  _ahh-!_  Th-they aren't horrible…."

"Then?" Then word went with a stroke.

"Whatever you're thinking,  _just do it_ ," Lelouch told him.

Suzaku needed no more prodding than that. He went down on his knees. He yanked Lelouch's pants to expose his thighs. His hand closed over where Lelouch was slick and hard,  _without_ the fabric in between his grip this time. Lelouch nearly sobbed, wanting it, and seized Suzaku's tousled hair. And then—

"I think I saw him…?" Female voice.

"Oh ho ho, I bet he's—AAGH?!"

Suzaku was upright faster than a shot, trapping and protecting Lelouch from view against the wall. "Oh, my god," he hissed. "That was Lloyd. He saw—"

"Cécile-kun? Don't walk over there. It's more nature than science, it seems, and we want a Devicer. I say—"

Lelouch decided he wanted to die. Zero and all thoughts of living be damned.

Suzaku straightened their clothes, becoming calm. Then, like the masochistic idiot he was, Suzaku went around the corner, looked down the aisle at Earl Lloyd Asplund, and said hi.

"Sorry to disturb you both," Suzaku said. "Were you looking for me?" He ruffled his hair.

Lelouch would rip his ball sack off. They could have fled. Or pretended not to be there. Or used more of that hot pink gas—

Lloyd replied, "Ahaha, that should be  _my_  line, shouldn't it?"

"What on earth— Suzaku, your clothes!" Suzaku looked down to find them quite violently wrinkled.

The slender, pretty coworker Lelouch had grown familiar with revealed herself at the same time Lelouch did. Lelouch coolly brushed his bangs, and stood with his arms folded. He made up a perfect lie.

"Oh?" he drawled. "Good evening. We were conducting an anatomy lesson. We couldn't find the dummy doll they use in class, when we were sent out here to search. Therefore, we had to compromise. It's imperative Suzaku studies."

It was Suzaku's turn to smile nervously, and look at Lelouch as if Lelouch were the one stupid. "Ah, well um. Actually…."

The woman said, "You're that boy Suzaku was…." She stopped. "Ahem. Anatomy?"

Lloyd mumbled, "Is that what people call that act these days?"

"Correct," Lelouch announced, coolly, using the moment to slide past Suzaku. He couldn't afford to spend too much time near military personnel…. He would escape. But first….

He felt that tingle rare up in his Geass eye.

Something clicked on the pretty woman's face. Suzaku uttered an audible groan. "Cécile-san," Suzaku told her, "Please. I didn't mean for you to see—" He stepped into Lelouch's line of sight. Inwardly, Lelouch began to curse. How was he supposed to get them out of this?

"Suzaku," Cécile's smile prickled. "We came to take you back after your fun."

"Fun? To let him use that word—"

"Lloyd," the woman grabbed Lloyd by the ear. "Let's allow these two young men to  _say a proper, nice goodbye,_ before we drag Suzaku to work. Okay, Suzaku? We'll be waiting for you."

Lelouch looked between them, and forgot Geass entirely.

Then he was glad he was actually Zero. He didn't have a pair of bosses who would never let him live this down.

The odd couple left, with the earl hauled by the ear. When they were gone, Suzaku said, "Are you very hard any more, Lelouch?"

"That's a dumb question," Lelouch replied.

"It was going well. I didn't get bitten by Arthur."

"I locked him in the conference room this time."

"I don't think that we can finish anything, before they really will expect me back."

"You were considering it?" Lelouch stood stricken. Then he grinned. He told Suzaku to wait before he left.

Suzaku, a little bit ahead, and in the shadow of some boxes in the aisle, stopped on Lelouch's command. Lelouch ran fingers down his cheek.

"I like you when you aren't so stressed."

"I like it, too."

"Then come again."

Lelouch let Suzaku sweep his fingers up and kiss them. He felt warm.

"It's been a long time, Suzaku." They still had barely gone past kiss. Tonight would have been perfect to explore….

"I have to be with Euphie now."

"Even so." He wanted them to stay like this.

Suzaku made him promises. Lelouch helped him collect his things. He walked Suzaku halfway to the truck his supervisors rode in.

"I'll tell Cécile to convince Lloyd that he was dreaming," Suzaku said, waving goodbye. Lelouch wondered if this was part of his skewed urge for punishment.

Lelouch did not see Suzaku again, until the Gawain touched down in Euphie's Special Administrative Zone.

It turned out things had gone too far. She really was a formidable opponent. Left and right, Elevens – Japanese – flocked to Euphie's zone to be accepted. The Black Knights found themselves forced to make friends with the corner in which they'd been boxed; dignity suffered. Not to participate in the proceedings now, when Euphie had become a great success, would have meant dissolution for his band. The breakdown of the organization Lelouch had sold his soul and lost whole nights of sleep to form.

He had never expected Euphie to charm the world. He'd simply have to take his opposition to a higher level.

Zero went inside her mobile G1 base, with a ceramic gun they didn't find, and strove not to look at Suzaku in his white-and-gold uniform as he strode by.

He shut the cameras down, once safe inside. He yelled. He threatened.

But Euphemia beat him.

"I decided for Nunnally's sake," she said.

Lelouch gave Euphie his gloved hand, and in that moment, understood that he'd been bitter, wrong. He thought of Suzaku, waiting outside, blindly trusting both Euphemia and him. Suzaku had wished for this result with all his heart. The least Lelouch could do, now that he'd been made such a fool, was concede to Suzaku's wishes and give him a better world.

His ego, though, was slightly bruised. He couldn't help boasting, to make up for his lost pride. Euphie giggled at him. Lelouch teased.

He gave her a command that he had never meant to give.

After that, nothing could be stopped. To see her… dripping so much blood… tossing herself into the task, with a will only she could have, after she had tried and failed to oppose his cursed Geass…. Lelouch thought that his heart would stop. He hardly heard a thing that C.C. said, back in the Gawain.

What could he do? What was there to be done, but the one thing he had been doing from the start?

Shedding blood, so that blood shed wasn't in vain.

So he exploited Euphie to the end. He sullied her name the way the blood sullied her dress. He fought back all his shudders, and climbed back out of Gawain. She was perhaps the first girl who had taught him how to love.

Lelouch, aiming swiftly, taught her how to die.

He didn't move, when the Lancelot swept in and scooped her limp form in its arms.

Even C.C. couldn't speak words that took the tremble out of his voice in the aftermath. Nunnally called, and didn't know Euphie had died, and that was so much worse than having pulled the trigger.

"Go home," C.C. said quietly, and the pity was more than Lelouch wanted to bear. "Your sister is your reason to fight, is she not? If you abandon her now because you're scared the truth will hurt her, you'll be doing more harm than good."

"I'll go," he said. "But after this, I…." He didn't think he could go back. To look upon Ashford's bright lawns, where Euphie had so recently flounced…. No, he would pack a small gym bag. Tell Sayoko that he was taking a vacation.

Now that he couldn't control the Geass, he'd have to say goodbye to everyone.

That morning, Lelouch wandered his way home. Even though the Black Knights all across Japan moved toward the Settlement… even though Lelouch knew he must ready them for battle…. He had to comfort Nunnally, and see her one more time, to remind himself why he must fight. She was the only person who could comfort him. She was the only person who would never suffer from his uncontrollable Geass. She couldn't see him.

She couldn't see him cry.

When Lelouch walked inside, behind a somber-faced Sayoko, Suzaku was already there. Lelouch stopped dead, watching him hold Nunnally's hand.

"And that's what happened?" Nunnally's voice shook.

Lelouch wondered how much of what Suzaku told her had been truth or sweetened lies. He resented Suzaku for being beside Nunnally, for the first time in his short life. Lelouch would have told  _every_  lie, with no discrimination, just to keep the girl from sobbing.

Still, as he watched the two of them shed tears, and squeeze each other's hands like the contact would sustain them, he knew that C.C. had been right. It would have caused more harm to keep Nunnally from the truth.

"Suzaku. Nunnally," he said.

Suzaku didn't turn Lelouch's way. "She was kind, always, and she wanted a world where people our age could be free to just be students…."

A lump rose in Lelouch's throat. He couldn't bear to see Suzaku weeping so, and so he looked away instead. But Suzaku's voice rent his heart as he went on. Memories, emotions, regret and fury.

Nunnally held Suzaku's head against her lap, caring not at all for how his tears dampened her skirt.

"I hate myself, for trusting Zero. Even for an instant. Even when she promised it would be okay! But Euphie never liked it when I seemed to feel like that. She told me she would love me, if I only didn't hate myself…."

Love? Lelouch's fisted a hand. His heart beat rapidly. Suzaku sobbed.

"For someone so sudden, to suddenly die! She was full of life, Euphie! I know she wouldn't… ever pick up a gun… and shoot…. I don't know… what got into her…." His words fell apart like a sandcastle in a tide. He cried on Nunnally so hard he couldn't speak.

Nunnally said, "Oh, I-I can't bear—and Suzaku, it's the hardest on you—" But her voice faltered, with regret, sorrow, and guilt. Guilty because, not long ago, she'd been slightly jealous of Euphie's closeness to Suzaku. Now she felt terrible for it. Lelouch felt terrible that she was wracked by pain.

Lelouch watched the two people he cared for the most – cared for more than the whole  _world_  – break down and cry. His own tears suddenly dried up. The path of carnage… caused by his own Geass. What right had he, Lelouch, to cry, when he had hurt Suzaku and Nunnally?

Quietly, Lelouch retreated from the room. He let Sayoko tend them, and he went to don his mask.


	6. Viruses

The problem with having a mind that worked with incredible processing power was that, despite how Lelouch backed up his system, there were still times when his hard drive could crash. He experienced a crash that he couldn't come back from, when Suzaku dragged him in front of his father.

Lelouch had thought he'd done a virus scan. During their phone call, he had asked himself some probing questions. Was he  _thinking_ about what Suzaku was saying, about the skies of Tokyo that evening? Did Lelouch completely understand what Suzaku meant, when Suzaku talked about being consumed now by hatred? Suzaku had killed his own father. Suzaku was a soldier. Now rules couldn't hold him. He would take off after Zero.

That meant murder, if Suzaku found him. It meant there'd be  _murder_ , Lelouch processed numbly.

Still, Lelouch had no reason to panic. His death was the worst outcome he could think up, and so he had simply continued to plan. He didn't tell Suzaku that Suzaku's murderous goals were wrong. It'd be hypocritical, to express such a thing. Even though the person Suzaku sought to kill was  _him_ …. Lelouch would have to allow him to try. If Lelouch died, then Suzaku was right; Lelouch was wrong. But if Lelouch lived….

If he lived, he would never turn back. That was why he couldn't tell Suzaku to turn back, either. Lelouch couldn't deny that Suzaku's voice sent chills like pennies rolling down his spine, but he told himself,  _I can – no, I_ will _– stand without flinching under Suzaku's stare, if meeting him as Zero is a thing that has to happen._

He'd done enough backup, or so he had thought. That was why Lelouch carried a gun, and a vial of liquid Sakuradite he could strap to his heart and threaten to explode. He knew the virus that was Suzaku would find him. Lelouch assumed from the start he could be followed. He wasn't surprised when Suzaku shot his mask off.

But afterward, Lelouch realized he'd still managed to make a grave mistake.

Lelouch had forgotten that viruses mutate. Change, morph, and grow, into what couldn't be fought. Suzaku had become unpredictable now, and Lelouch fell apart when he realized it had happened. On the floor of that great throne room – insulted, battered, completely denied – Lelouch understood that he was losing not just Nunnally, but also Suzaku. Losing Suzaku forever.  _Forever_ , because a cog in Suzaku's mind had shifted, and now there was no winning Suzaku back.

And so, Suzaku sold Lelouch out, after all they'd done and shared. Because Suzaku wanted to advance. Because Lelouch was Zero… and Suzaku an opportunist.

And so Lelouch's hard drive crashed. It crashed so hard, he didn't realize when he walked out of the throne room that he'd been given a fake world, and the sun he squinted at contentedly was really darkness.

But even in the blackest darkness, people find the light somehow.

Lelouch found it, with the help of his supporters. He thought the reboot had been C.C.'s long kiss.

Only now, back at Ashford, staring at the boy who blocked the whiteboard, did Lelouch decide that this, here, now….  _This_  was the real reset button. Suzaku, walking toward him stiffly, with his emerald eyes like stones.

Lelouch wiped his features of expression – all but those he needed to act.

Reboot.

Reset. This time, take nothing for granted.

Take nothing at face value and trust absolutely no one. Take bigger risks, but don't waste time, and never assume risk-taking has less a chance of failure just because the choices made are choices rare and wild. Assume the worst might happen, and will, and this time multiply results of that by ten. Then understand the real result could  _still_  be worse than anything at all imagined.

_Prepare_ , Lelouch thought, to the beat of Suzaku's steps,  _for the possibility that Nunnally is really dead. That Suzaku will kill me, too._

That Lelouch might destroy the world, but fail in his attempts to rebuild it.

Suzaku's shoes scuffed to a halt. The classroom paused, as they two looked at one another.

Charles had erased three memories – of Nunnally, of Zero, and of the fact that Lelouch had been a prince. But he hadn't erased anything to do with Suzaku specifically. Lelouch, while Geassed, had recalled who Suzaku was, because of school and the student council. Their shared childhood had been wiped away, but as for basic recognition, and a certain old attraction….

Lelouch twitched his hand, while Villetta Nu hid her smirk rather poorly. Lelouch realized something like he'd been slapped with a sheet of steel wool. Why hadn't the emperor erased the memories of their intimacy?

Why hadn't Suzaku  _asked_  Charles to?

They made eye contact, green and purple – holding, seeking, judging… loathing. Suzaku did not blink once.

Suzaku had been in a position to have any request that he wanted granted. Their old desire, their attraction should have been the first of memories to disappear.

Surely Suzaku didn't intend to pick up where they'd left off? That would be…. That would be just….

"It's been a long time," they said to each other, and Lelouch began to churn like a volcano inside. A volcano with nothing it could do but bide its time.

The class calmed down, and homeroom formally commenced.

"I'd like us to meet on the roof," Lelouch told Suzaku when the bell rang afterward, since he wasn't sure the sign they'd made up – tugging the collar – would be valid any longer. Now more than ever, Lelouch couldn't give himself away. He had to meet his challenges this time, before they could creep up and meet him.

Suzaku answered, "Oh? And why?"

Lelouch just repeated, "It's been a long time."

_That_  sat between them until after lunch. Lunch happened on the lawn, where the student council asked questions about Zero. Pretending in front of all their friends was good practice for where Lelouch knew he and Suzaku would be headed. Still, Lelouch didn't take pride in it. It was his fault all of their friends had fake memories. His, and also…. Yes. Suzaku's.

Lelouch acted calm, but he stewed like a pot roast, until finally the last classroom bell rang. He smoothed his Ashford uniform and made his way up an emptying set of stairs.

On the roof, the clouds made stretched-out cotton candy layers of pink and purple. Lelouch watched students heading home. Shirley waved to Rivalz from the grass. She and Milly, it looked like, were going to spend the twilight hours completing further preparations for the garden. They wanted to grow roses, of every bright color. Rivalz appeared to be headed for a bike ride.

Gone were the days Lelouch sat in his sidecar.

"It's going to be a fantastic sunset."

Lelouch turned around, pasting on a cool expression. "There's no better place to be," he answered, wistful.

Suzaku's face remained colorless, empty – uninhabited Tupperware that only pretended to be flexible. Lelouch wondered if he recalled how to smile.

It was the first human thought Lelouch had had toward Suzaku, since being hauled to Charles that night. Nothing had been easier than banishing Suzaku to the recesses of his mind, once he'd regained the life Charles had removed. Lelouch hated Suzaku now from the darkest, deepest pits inside his soul, but he'd refused to let his hate seep forward while busy re-attaining Zero's world.

He wouldn't change his methods now, even with Suzaku standing before him. To Lelouch right now, Suzaku meant nothing. Lelouch refused to feel the stab wound of Suzaku's betrayal any more.

The time to mourn had come and gone. Lelouch moved on to greater things.

He let the wind play with his hair. He waited for Suzaku to show his hand, ready to weigh Suzaku's intentions.

"I've been watching you closely all day," Suzaku said. He leaned on the railing.

So, cutting to the chase, Lelouch thought.

"And?" asked Lelouch. "What did you see?"

"Somebody whose smile is a little bit too guiltless. Somebody too interested when all his friends were chatting."

Suzaku thought that normally Lelouch acted rude? Disinterested? Perhaps that was the truth, but Lelouch didn't miss Suzaku's layers of suggestion. Suzaku was accusing Lelouch right now of appearing too clean and too involved – therefore, Lelouch must be hiding something.

Suzaku thought "something" was his memories, returned. Lelouch had come armed and prepared to lead Suzaku away from those suspicions. Simply denying it would have been twice as suspicious, however.

"You're right," Lelouch said easily, "and you've caught me, Suzaku. I've been lying to everyone about something important."

Suzaku breathed out his nose, very slowly. Lelouch watched his eyes transform from blank to wholly dead and dim. "I see," Suzaku said, in his dark monotone, not even bothering to turn his head. The look was the look he'd worn, identifying the face he hadn't wanted to believe was behind Zero's mask, despite his completely expecting it to be there.

Lelouch – as with the first time – kept his strength up in the face of Suzaku's emptiness.

He mirrored Suzaku's smooth lean on the railing, so that their elbows nearly touched. Suzaku shifted away. Lelouch pretended not to notice.

"I've just been bored," he told Suzaku. "I'm discontented, deep inside. It's a bit of frustration, tension… maybe depression. I've been pretending to take interest in more than I really do, in hopes that maybe true interest or some enthusiasm will develop. Maybe it's because I know that soon I'll graduate and I still don't know where to go with my life."

Suzaku showed no signs of reaction.

"I'm not interested in work, or even gambling any more. I sometimes get the feeling that my life is… pointless, now. It's because our whole world is a mess. Nothing has changed, even after a rebellion like Zero's, and I feel helpless knowing that. What's the point in  _anyone's_  ambition, if not even our best efforts can stand against these awful times? Sometimes I wake up at night, half-believing I had something I once wanted to accomplish. Something I created for the sake of improving lives, the world… but then I can't remember what my plan was any more."

This time, Suzaku looked up. He frown turned very faintly deeper. Lelouch went on, outlining the symptoms that had been caused by his father's Geass. Symptoms he'd come to know and hate, the more they'd pricked at him, in all that time.

"There's no motivation left in my heart. These feelings… they're nags in the back of my head, too hidden to become outwardly destructive, but all the same, they're there. I don't know what the point is of existing, Suzaku. I don't like my life any more, because so much feels fake around me."

Suzaku's hands slipped off the railing. He faced Lelouch so that his hair was framed by sky.

Lelouch didn't have to tap into a lie, to make his tumble of words come out real. The sense of something wrong he'd felt, that gnawing frustration that life was so empty… those valiant efforts to take risks in the adult world to fill the void, only to realize the void still existed….

Lelouch had become the waste of potential that Kallen had once accused him of being, before she'd known that he was really Zero.

In front of Kallen, his lack of motivation had always been acting. What Suzaku had done had made that act reality.

_You robbed me of my drive. My very core. You made me a herd animal, a creature with no purpose. A wasted human life. I would have died without achieving anything._

Lelouch let Suzaku's gaze rake him, search his words for hidden, poison meaning. Whatever conclusions Suzaku settled on, Lelouch didn't care and did not intend to change them.

If Suzaku wanted to have suspicions, he'd take Lelouch's confession as reproach. A sign of conflict. He'd think Lelouch was saying,  _Do you see what you've done? See the way I hate you for it? I think you were very wrong._  If Suzaku decided Lelouch  _wasn't_  Zero, he'd feel guilty instead, for erasing such an important part of his friend's personality – especially now that said friend was expressing inner turmoil.

Either way, Lelouch could work with it.

"Do you have a problem with peace?" Suzaku asked.

It became Lelouch's turn to shift around. He made sure to keep his arms loose at his sides. He looked into green eyes and said, "Suzaku, do you call what Britannia has done lately  _peace?_ "

"Then you believe in Zero's side?"

"No, I don't, because Zero failed. There's plenty wrong with how he operated, and no guarantee that this new one who showed up will do any better than what was previously tried. I thought we'd discussed this. I thought you agreed." Lelouch frowned. "What he did to Euphemia…."

"There are lines are your forehead. You're worked up about something more."

"No, I'm not worked up. I just don't get how you think our current lives are better, or how you can say Britannia's a better entity than Zero."

The wind blew, and Suzaku took a moment to answer.

"Maybe our lives aren't better," Suzaku said at last. "But in all, everyone's lives are going to be. And it will come through better methods. Lelouch, you have a life now that's relaxed, and full of nothing but goodness—"

"I have a life where I'm privileged and helpless."

"—and there are no evil influences here to drag you down. You should use your brilliant mind to do something positive, if you want to find purpose and develop motivation. If you can't do that, at least enjoy going to school. Your life is a beautiful picture-book image; you're normal, you're loved, and you're safer not fighting. There's no excuse for you not to be happy."

"Ah, listen to you. I think  _you're_  the one worked up."

"Lelouch."

Lelouch's stomach flipped. He heard more in Suzaku's voice than his name.

All Lelouch did was smile, complacently. If he didn't, the volcano would blow.

So that's what the memory wipe was about? Suzaku believed he was giving Lelouch a chance to start over, on a path better than Zero's? Yet who had set that path? Suzaku? The emperor? Rolo and Viletta? Had anyone dared to ask  _him_  what he wanted?

He couldn't believe it. Suzaku thought allowing Charles to Geass him was  _saving_  him? Protecting Lelouch. From who? Himself? From the taint of the Geass? From his past as a prince, that had driven him to try his damndest to destroy Britannia? How was removing  _Nunnally_ supposed to make him happy? As if Rolo were any kind of substitute!

And Suzaku was supposed to hate him. Hate Zero, and wish for Zero to be murdered. What was this farce, then – a change of heart, before dragging Lelouch to the throne room? These kinds of mixed signals were not acceptable. Did Suzaku really think Lelouch would become happy, peaceful, if he were given some sort of clean slate? Was a new life for Lelouch somehow more preferable to Suzaku than having Lelouch's blood on his hands? As if, by rewriting Lelouch instead of killing him, Suzaku could change or lessen the reality of the fact that he was already on the path of carnage the same as Lelouch was, as Zero! How despicable!

Lelouch's hands trembled, but he hid their shaking behind his sleeves.

Suzaku should have slit Lelouch's throat. Should have pulled the trigger and aimed better. Exploded the Sakuradite. Very bad, that Suzaku hadn't done so. Bad, that Suzaku had been naïve enough to think Lelouch's core beliefs would change, even with Geass, because….

Because now, Lelouch was going to ruin him.  _Destroy_ Suzaku from the inside out, and feel nothing whatever as he did it. He would fight until he couldn't any more.

Suzaku announced, "You're unhappy again."

Lelouch could not stem an explosion, he realized. And so, as not to compromise himself, he simply exploded the way that he wanted.

"Of course I'm not; it doesn't take a detective to see it! Do you want to know why I'm angry, Suzaku?"

He would take all the stoppers out. He'd play his role so well Suzaku would never know what hit him. He didn't raise his voice, but he put some iron in it – keeping the words false, but the emotion behind them real.

"Think about the way you came back to Ashford, after being gone so long. You came into class, and you didn't even smile. You  _left_ , Suzaku. You just left  _me_. I know you picked the military. I know you got promoted and you went to the E.U.. But let me make one thing quite clear. When I told you I didn't want this to be a relationship—" he prodded Suzaku in the chest, letting his voice break a little on purpose "—I didn't mean it was okay to ignore me for almost a year, and then come back and even  _halfway_  expect I wouldn't have a thousand reasons to be curt with you."

Suzaku caught Lelouch's hand mid-prod. He looked between Lelouch's fingers and Lelouch's eyes. His lips parted.

Lelouch did not have Suzaku convinced that he was innocent; that Lelouch well knew. But… Lelouch had managed to draw out guilt. Suzaku, whether there was reason to feel it or not, was always quick to punish himself for actions, using guilt inside his head. In this case, the problem was not that Suzaku had abandoned an innocent, rewritten Lelouch – it was that  _if_  Suzaku's suspicions were wrong and  _if_ Lelouch was innocent… Suzaku  _might_ have. The  _might_ alone was enough to fully stall him. The suggestion something  _could_ be wrong was just as effective as if Suzaku had been  _proven_  wrong.

Ever masochistic, brimming with his infinite types of self-hatred. Lelouch felt equally sickened and triumphant.

He used it to his advantage. He did something he didn't want to do, but needed to do – to gauge how difficult it would be to render Suzaku a total non-threat. To determine where this had to go.

Lelouch wrenched his arm free, and grabbed Suzaku by the collar. He crashed their lips together and made sure his hands were trembling. Suzaku's lips – windblown and chapped – remained tightly closed. Lelouch remembered that they were more pliant after he'd been laughing, always.

Suzaku did absolutely nothing. Then shock registered, little by little. And emptiness, from Lelouch's side.

Lelouch felt nothing. The kiss was going well, despite not going anywhere in those tense seconds. He understood that he had played his cards right.

Suzaku had thought Lelouch so guilty, he hadn't imagined Lelouch might attempt  _this_. Suzaku didn't think even a sly, play-acting Lelouch would go this far to convince Suzaku of his innocence. He'd banked on the assumption that Lelouch hated him too much to be able to stomach a move like a kiss.

Suzaku had probably been waiting around, for the right moment to use their old attraction to his own benefit. He would touch Lelouch, or flirt, and wait for Lelouch to flinch away, then say triumphantly,  _You're not able to pretend to want me. That's how I know that you've turned into Zero._

Which was precisely why Lelouch had needed to move first. If Suzaku was still determined, still had any kind of brains, he'd understand that he'd just lost, and he'd play along while he tried to recover. He'd kiss Lelouch back, to uphold the façade, and hope instead to trip Lelouch up in the future.

Suzaku wrenched himself away.

Lelouch realized that he'd been giving Suzaku too much credit.

Even better! Lelouch wanted to laugh. Even easier this way. Lelouch caught a glimpse of the look on Suzaku's face, before Suzaku composed himself, and he thought,  _You make it so easy to win._

Horror, disgust, and unadulterated hatred splashed Suzaku's features, mixed with tinges of illness at the sudden intimacy pressed on him. He looked poised to murder Lelouch with bare hands, but he gained control of himself at the last second.

Lelouch wanted to laugh until he dropped, standing there at the onset of twilight. Suzaku couldn't stomach the idea of their intimacy any more than Lelouch could, but Lelouch knew how to fake anything, and therefore, Lelouch was the one now on top. He couldn't have asked for a sweeter revenge.

He feigned hurt. "Are we over, then? Did you meet someone else abroad?"

Suzaku forced himself to stand up taller. Smoothed his face. "It's nothing like that."

"Well," said Lelouch, and it took all his skill to keep his smirk of victory at bay, "then I don't see the issue with a kiss."

"My… my mind," Suzaku struggled, "is still… somewhere in battle, I guess. I haven't done this in a while. My head is a little—"

"Addled by your celibacy?" Lelouch took two steps to close the gap between them, reaching boldly for between Suzaku's legs.

Suzaku paled and snatched Lelouch's wrist. For half an instant, Lelouch worried Suzaku might actually pass out with the strain of concealing his hatred.

To the green-eyed boy's credit, Suzaku said, "I flew in just this morning, you know, and haven't showered. You might want to let me, before those things happen."

"A fair buy for time," Lelouch replied. "I'll allow it."

Suzaku looked at him very hard, for a very, very long time.

Shirley called up from the lawn. Something about the trellises, and carrying them to where they planned to build the garden. Suzaku let go of Lelouch's wrist, while Lelouch reflected that some things never changed.

"Tonight," Suzaku said, still struggling, "I want to see you. Will that be okay?"

"It's almost night right now, and I'm in front of you." He said it brightly.

Suzaku's expression didn't change. "They're throwing a party in three days to welcome me back, but I want alone time. Just the two of us."

"To make up for your bad behavior?"

"And do some other things, as well." Suzaku's eyes trailed down Lelouch's form, with only a hint of his prior sudden illness. In fact, his old familiar brand of suggestion had colored the words.

Lelouch tried not to show his twist of disgust, or feel his victory was newly threatened.

Shirley was calling something else, but Lelouch didn't hear. Suzaku was ready to be just as bold, and treat their intimacy like a game of chicken? Whoever backed out first in loathing lost – Zero versus Knight of Seven? Lelouch hadn't expected him to rise to this so fast.

Or was this comeback something different? Did Suzaku actually intend to continue using Lelouch as his sexual relief, now that Zero had supposedly been cast aside? Maybe Suzaku didn't suspect Lelouch at all, but was merely having difficulty erasing Zero from his thoughts – striving to see his friend without the taint of what he'd hated. The others had been Geassed to forget, but Suzaku had to struggle, had to manage the erasure in his own head by himself.

Why hadn't Suzaku asked Charles to erase the memories of their attraction?

Lelouch thought it through harder this time, while he lifted a coy eyebrow in response to Suzaku's equally coy suggestion. Perhaps, in the end, Suzaku hadn't had as much power during the audience with Charles as Lelouch had assumed. Or, once Suzaku had demanded a Rounds position, Charles had been be unwilling to hear any further wild requests. Additionally….

Requesting a specific erasure would have required telling Charles about the memory in the first place. Suzaku wouldn't have wanted Charles to know about their sexual forays any more than Lelouch would have. So… that meant Charles had either been ignorant of their attraction… or he'd known, and chosen to leave the memories present of his own accord.

Suzaku chuckled very softly, and stepped a foot more toward Lelouch.

Who had told Charles about their attraction? Whoever had told Suzaku about the Geass had known even Lelouch's true identity; it could have been that person, if that person knew that much. But why would  _anyone_  specifically desire to leave such complex memories, and put Suzaku in such a strange position? Surely the emperor knew Suzaku's feelings for Lelouch had died with Zero. Suzaku would not have turned Lelouch over if any lingering emotions existed.

Or would he?

"I don't want you to think I didn't miss you, Lelouch."

Was it possible that Suzaku remained conflicted? Was it possible that Charles had foreseen that confliction, and left the memories there as an open invitation? What if Charles had left the memories so that Suzaku would have the power to do  _whatever he wanted?_

The thought was maddening and blackly chilling. What might Suzaku do, with power in the form of possibility like that? Use it somehow, to satisfy innocent Lelouch and keep hungry, buried Zero at bay? Use it selfishly, to sate his own satisfaction?

"I want us to do something special," Suzaku was saying, while Lelouch's mental clock ticked in seconds double-timed. "To make up for my absence and my attitude. Okay?"

"Suzaku—"

Suzaku drew close.

Lelouch's thoughts became tangled too quickly. His animal instinct was all he had left, and suddenly it was screaming, in ever fiber of his consciousness,  _Don't let him_. _Don't. This is wrong._

Someone, somewhere down the line, had decided to create a loophole for them, in which Suzaku and Lelouch might still continue their intimate interactions – whether the emotions behind them were faked, half-faked, real, or otherwise. The idea of justifying the continuation of a connection that rightfully ought to have been squandered…. This was some sort of mockery. Lelouch felt like he'd vomit, but what was worse… he felt a spark of something else ignite him.

He felt the heat of selfish expectation – at the recognition of a chance. A chance at regaining even a microscopic scrap of—

There was nowhere he could go. Suzaku lifted a hand to his chin. Lelouch had screwed up, and he hated himself.

How could he have lost the upper hand so quickly? Why was Suzaku leaning in for a new kiss? Why was Lelouch shifting into his touch, like they had not tried to  _murder each other_  the last time they'd met? Too late, Lelouch understood his mistake. His very human, very damnable reaction.

He had taken his brain and heart into account; his brain and his heart hated Suzaku. Wholly. But Lelouch hadn't considered unquashable human hope, or what his  _body_  might still want. His body remembered Suzaku's heated touch.

His body, for so long now, had been thirsty for that union.

Suzaku thought of the body first. And he was using it now, to make Lelouch as uncomfortable as Lelouch had made him with words and that first chaste, scolding kiss.

If Lelouch was innocent, it was Suzaku's apology and oath of renewed trust, his promise of still-present lust.

If Lelouch was Zero, it stood as a warning.  _I will expose you, and show them how you're lying_.

Suzaku's warm hand traced Lelouch's hip, sliding around in back possessively, to embrace Lelouch while Lelouch's skin tingled. He wanted to scream for Suzaku not to touch him. He twitched, trying to physically fight against the part of him he couldn't let resurface.

"Wear something nice?" Suzaku pleaded, softly. "It's the rain check, for our date."

"How dashing of you, to remember that exchange."

Suzaku let him go. Lelouch's volcano stood primed for eruption.

He wanted to tell the Black Knights, tell C.C. and Kallen,  _Seek and destroy Suzaku Kururugi, at all costs, as number the one priority, and bring me back his head on a plate!_ But because of Suzaku and Charles zi Britannia, the Black Knights were not yet rebuilt to full power. He didn't  _have_  C.C., or Kallen, or Ohgi right now. Lelouch was alone at school, with friends whose memories didn't match his, a gym coach he couldn't use Geass on, and a fake little brother whose real desires yet remained unclear to him.

For the first time since regaining his identity, Lelouch felt truly run to ground. Perhaps, he could have gotten out… but not with Suzaku, waiting outside his escape hole holding a gun.

Lelouch felt small, timid, and cold, and hated that he'd just been forced to admit it.

As Suzaku walked off the roof, calling for Shirley to wait just a moment, fending off Shirley's yelps about what it looked like they two had just been doing with each other from her distant vantage point, Lelouch wondered how far this would go.

How far, before the two of them became more twisted and scarred than they both were already?

* * *

When Lelouch stepped into the kingdom of twinkling lights, it was with dark, renewed purpose, a hardened soul, and nothing but his cold and analytic observation. The meeting on the rooftop might as well have never happened; he looked on the pretty garden scene Suzaku had created on the Ashford lawn with lack of interest. A frigid shower and remembrance of his father's eyes had called Lelouch back to his duty as Zero, reminding him that saving Nunnally was a greater priority than any carnal urge he could identify or act on.

Some things, people threw aside – killing their own souls for greater good. Lelouch had been doing just that all along. He had no reason to fall off track now. He looked at the curvy chairs, the neat square table.

Suzaku must have cut Shirley a deal.  _I help you move these trellises and tables, you lend me a few of these things for tonight._  Only, it would have come out much more awkward, with neck-scratching and laughing, to cover up truth. Suzaku would have evaded Shirley, when she asked what girl Suzaku wanted to woo.

Once Suzaku had shaken her off, though, he would have set to stringing up the lights with a purposeful air. Perhaps a melody-less hum. The work would have made Suzaku forget what he was planning for. Lelouch couldn't blame him for wanting to deny it.

A fantastic array of appetizers dotted the table. Suzaku could probably polish off two or three on his own. Lelouch wondered where Suzaku had procured all the food. He was stricken, as well, to see that two champagne glasses and a bottle glimmered, catching the lights and throwing around sparkles.

Lelouch remembered thinking once that alcohol possessed a power of its own – one that, if used well, could work like the Geass. He told himself he'd be careful tonight, and only pretend to drink it, but Lelouch's mind glossed over it as he took in the perfectly trimmed grass, the perfect wicker chairs, and even more perfectly dressed Suzaku.

Hair looking dark in the intimate lighting. Black pants, a pale, collared shirt, and a tie.

A tie that brought out the jungle in green eyes.

Lelouch affected an exasperated tone. "Was there a need to so intensely overdo it?"

Suzaku stood up to greet him, grimly. Lelouch tried not to let his face crumble, watching the way Suzaku moved in his fine clothes. He thought,  _You didn't even kiss me goodbye. Not once, for all the closeness we had, before you watched everything that made me who I am completely disappear at the word of that man._

But thoughts like that were exactly what he had come here knowing that he needed to stem.

"You've outdone yourself," Lelouch continued. "It's too romantic for a soldier, don't you think?"

"I had help," Suzaku said. Then he blushed. He was genuinely proud of his created scene.

His flush made Lelouch ache for innocent days. God, what was this? Was he simply too tired for staunch resolution, even directly in the face of his enemy? How come he could manage when Suzaku was not around?

Lelouch pretended to examine the scented vines that twined the trellises, but this day had made him remarkably weary. Was deciding to continue the night with Suzaku a foolish errand? Should he have cancelled? All he wanted to do was sink into his pillow, and let his brilliant façades drop. But he couldn't, because Suzaku was set on exposing him.

Always Suzaku's fault, Lelouch's deep turmoil.

"You're secretly impressed, aren't you. Won't you come and sit down?"

Lelouch sat across from Suzaku's chair. Suzaku sat down again as well, after making sure that Lelouch felt settled. They started to discuss all the ingredients inside the appetizers.

To constantly war with the distraction of desire, back when there had still been some... that was one thing – a beast all its own. Lelouch remembered well the challenge of it. But to fight with his base urge to kill, or at least  _maim_ Suzaku because of what Suzaku had done... It felt maddening, trying to contain the way his anger cropped up now despite his strict mental control. Lelouch felt unhinged, responding in kind to Suzaku's small talk as they politely made it. He wanted simply blood, screaming, and brutal retribution. He wanted to punish Suzaku for betrayal, and punish him again for showing Lelouch glimpses of the friendship they had lost.

_How could you do this to me?!_ he ached to screech.

The restraint he'd had during the day, the power to switch off had long worn down now, hadn't it. There was only so much emotional stamina Lelouch possessed. Right now, he was a wild card. Lelouch knew only one clear thing, as he moved in the way he'd planned before arriving.

He'd never  _wanted_  to harm anyone, but when he sat there looking at the man he used to kiss, it was torture to subdue his fatal impulses. So instead, Lelouch took all his hate and disguised it – as his desire. The lust an innocent Lelouch should feel, perching across from his object of affection.

He gently caught Suzaku's hand, over a plate of pale cheeses, and held it. "You know," he murmured, casual, "there's no need to do this for me."

He watched Suzaku's act flicker. It showed in a twitch at the edge of his jaw.

Lelouch came to a detached realization, waiting to see what Suzaku would do. Suzaku also fought the frustrations and strains of a new life of falsehoods, a life of bad-tasting lies. Suzaku also must swallow his hatred, and play pretend, and strive not to lose it. But there was a difference between their situations – one that kept Lelouch from any pity whatsoever.

Suzaku had chosen to impose this on himself, this awful state of living, caught between the truth and lies. In a way, Lelouch had chosen life like that as well, but not to this extent. No, never as deeply as this. He  _never_ would have chosen this state for himself.

And that was why he went another step in baiting Suzaku.

Lelouch moved his grip from Suzaku's hand to Suzaku's cheek. He intended to caress. Suzaku snatched his hand from the air like an insect.

Lelouch feigned a start. Surprise. "Are we, perhaps, a bit high-strung?"

The way Suzaku seized him was too rough. Lelouch remained calm and ignored the pain, as he posed his playful query.

"I'm sorry," said Suzaku. "It's just combat reflexes." He let go in a way that made it seem he had to separately command each of his fingers to release him.

"Ah, well then. It's very impressive. Your strength is an attractive attribute; don't subdue it just for my sake. But still. Why don't you come a little closer?" He watched Suzaku keenly as he spoke.

"Not right now, Lelouch. Drink your champagne."

"Perhaps I have been, and that's why I'm making rude requests."

He'd boxed Suzaku into a corner. Lelouch knew it, and Suzaku did, too. The old Suzaku would have acted by now, piqued and discreetly aroused by suggestion. He would have drawn in, slightly near, and let Lelouch lure him the rest of the way – with words, with smoldering gazes, with the promise of an enticing kiss. The old Suzaku would have tried to hide a smirk, not knowing he failed and just looked ravishing because of it. Lelouch swallowed, and took the responsibility of recreating that kind of scene himself, doing work for two and making sure it still looked natural.

He shifted his chair so it was closer to Suzaku's, disturbing the symmetry of the small table. Suzaku opened his mouth to protest, but Lelouch reached for Suzaku's tie.

He gripped the tie at its neat knot, and began to pull, stretching it loose. The catch in Suzaku's breath rewarded him.

"Lelouch." Reprimanding. "What about the food?"

"It's lovely, Suzaku, but I don't need nonsense." Suzaku didn't move, so Lelouch tugged him harder, until Suzaku at last was obliged to lean in close or cut off blood flow in his neck. "I'm not someone you need to pamper. Unless you pamper me with something very different." He let his eyes rake Suzaku's body.

"You're really thinking dirty, aren't you."

"It's a matter of my basic needs, Suzaku." Suzaku looked at him, like he were in pain that he clearly blamed on Lelouch. With his eyes like stone, he allowed Lelouch to guide him even closer. "Kiss me, Suzaku."

Suzaku obliged.

Lelouch bore it as best he could. It wasn't a natural kiss, by any means. Suzaku tasted a little like champagne. Lelouch had seen him dump his glass in the bushes once or twice, just like Lelouch had, but he'd still had a bit. Their tongues met only accidentally, as they played their game of chicken and took little gentle breaks, to create the excuse of restarting, going slowly. At one point, Suzaku stopped completely dead, refusing to respond when Lelouch trailed fingers against his jaw. Lelouch let out a tiny moan, to prompt him to react as if he meant it. After all, couldn't this be innocent Lelouch? Why deny Lelouch a perfectly good kiss experience?

Lelouch pushed his chair out more, after a time. Kissing while in separate seats was fast becoming tiresome. He hauled Suzaku farther in, still by the tie, but much more merciless this time.

Let his annoyance be interpreted as ardor. Passion and violence were often the same. Suzaku made a sound at him, of struggle or resistance. Lelouch released Suzaku's tie, after rendering it worthless as even a decorative item, and moved for Suzaku's collar instead, so Suzaku was forced to concentrate on what Lelouch was doing next.

Lelouch undid the top button of Suzaku's shirt, exposing the vein that fluttered hard in Suzaku's neck. Suzaku hadn't touched him once, with the exception of the union of their lips; Lelouch was irritated that he still did all the work. He wanted to say, in a voice like autumn leaves,  _You can't even pretend for me? Am I not worth at least that much, after I gave you everything I had?_

Lelouch tried harder at the kiss. He tried to move his lips to Suzaku's neck as he exposed it.

Suzaku didn't allow him to even come close. His hands came up to meet Lelouch's own, and hold Lelouch away like he was gripping dirty laundry.

Was it really  _that_  awful? The part of Lelouch that was ego – most of him – reacted to that with a surge of resentment. Reacted to that with a grim, renewed effort.

He switched his administrations to Suzaku's fingers.

Suzaku let go of one wrist in surprise. Lelouch caught up Suzaku's free hand and began to use the technique that had once been used on him. He licked along Suzaku's fingers, then took a couple of them in his mouth, twirling his tongue across their tips. Dipping his head and coming up again, a parody of more obscene gestures. Not so obscene as to make Suzaku flinch, but enough to remind him what he liked – Lelouch or no Lelouch.

He prayed it would have the desired effect. At least make Suzaku easier to maneuver.

Suzaku's whole body turned stiff. He promptly snatched his hand away. Lelouch glared at him, challenging him to blow his whole entire operation, daring him to suggest Lelouch was Zero.

Instead of erupt, Suzaku slowly removed his tie. It fell like a snaking ribbon to the grass.

"You're very spoiled, at the moment. I don't think it's fair, to be so damned demanding."

Suzaku almost never swore. He got out of his chair, and rolled up his shirtsleeves – taking the time to button them above his elbows, one after the other.

Lelouch said, recovering quickly, "Masturbation isn't such a useful outlet. Over and over, it's always the same."

"I'm sorry for such unacceptable tension."

Lelouch began to grow uncomfortable. Suzaku undid two more buttons on his shirt, stepped nearer, and Lelouch's light bulb zinged in realization.

Suzaku had decided that indeed, Lelouch was Zero. He had guessed Lelouch was not the least bit turned on by the things they did. So now Suzaku took a gamble.

He gambled that he could intimidate Lelouch into submission – submission being, in this case, a truce. An understanding that would mean Lelouch could feign acceptance of the fact they ought to eat, and thus there'd be no need to take their intimacy farther. Suzaku wanted to find a way to call the acting off at least in part, at least for now, so they didn't have to kiss. And he would do it by playing dirty.

He was giving Lelouch little glimpses of the parts of himself the old Lelouch had liked – his collarbone, his neck and shoulders. His warm, rough hands and smooth skin of his wrists. Lelouch convinced himself it wasn't working. He wasn't dumb enough to completely deny that he understood what his body still wanted – despite  _everything_  – but he also wasn't dumb enough to let the realization that Suzaku also understood it and would extort it bully him into self-hatred such that he would now give up.

He was Lelouch, not Suzaku Kururugi. He  _admitted_  his weaknesses, shoved them back, and simply worked around them.

But when Suzaku reached up and tousled his brown hair, Lelouch threw everything out the window, and decided he'd  _find a way_  to counter the Geass and end Suzaku swiftly, if it killed him.

"You're flushed, Lelouch. But still – why don't we finish the champagne?"

Suzaku leaned over him to pour another glass, and Lelouch started to feel a little sick. Suzaku smelled musky and male and attractive. Suzaku knew exactly what damage he was doing, how he was tossing Lelouch into confliction. The best part was, if Suzaku was wrong… an innocent Lelouch would only watch all this and become desperately aroused by it.

"I don't want to, Suzaku."

Lelouch let it encompass everything he felt, not caring if Suzaku could sense his apprehension.  _This isn't right_ , he thought again. What was becoming of all they had shared? Was this kind of mockery of themselves… was this kind of sick twist warranted?

Zero and Britannia had never had a thing to do with their attraction. Why taint the one part of their friendship that had been good, the one piece of their interactions that had not been ruined by fate or by bloodshed? Why make their sole good chunk of history a casualty of Geass, Charles and Zero?

"Suzaku," Lelouch began.

"I don't want to hear another word." Suzaku picked up a chocolate-dipped strawberry and brought it to Lelouch's lips.

The farce was more than Lelouch could bear. He knocked the strawberry to the ground.

Suzaku stared at him one instant; his eyes took on that familiar dead gleam. Lelouch's mind went round in loops. He'd gone too far, without thinking. He had to be the first to move, again, before Suzaku could decide anything.

The next thing Lelouch knocked to the ground was his chair. After that, he dragged Suzaku to the grass, too – on top of him.

Suzaku let out a quiet curse.

Lelouch didn't allow Suzaku to speak more. He started feverishly kissing and nipping – any exposed skin that he could reach without a struggle. Suzaku barely caught himself, but he held himself up under vivid assault. Lelouch untucked Suzaku's shirt, as if he yanked apart the wrapping paper on a present. He funneled his frustration and his helplessness into sharp acts that came across hungry and wanton.

He begged. "Suzaku. Don't make me wait. Please, I want you to—" he pulled Suzaku's hair, "—to do horrible things to me."

He made his voice breathy and low. He stole Suzaku's mouth again.

They kissed this time with a little more expression. Lelouch parted his lips, and Suzaku twice slipped his tongue in. Slick, and fast, and wet, and hard, they kissed – grasping and fumbling and shifting position. Lelouch tasted champagne and hesitation, so he thrice renewed his efforts, sliding hands low over Suzaku's abdomen, feeling the cut of the man who could kill him. He bent his knee and ran his outer thigh along Suzaku's inner one, inspiring further friction and motion.

In the moment after Suzaku shuddered, and Lelouch had run fingernails down Suzaku's back, Lelouch realized that he could hear light panting. A symphony of genuine desire. Waking passion.

His.

Suzaku bit down on his lip. Lelouch moaned against his provocative mouth.

The noise made Suzaku stop dead.

There they halted, with the grass pricking Lelouch's back through his threadbare – and now sweat-dampened – shirt, Suzaku with poison in his eyes like greenest swamp water, like chemical acid. Like strange, deadly absinthe. And Lelouch just drank it.

Suzaku said, "It's not because you're tipsy."

"It's not because you are, either." Lelouch let Suzaku's bangs tickle his cheek, when Suzaku pursed his lips and hung his head.

Suzaku whispered. "Lelouch, tell me the truth. Is there something you're hiding?"

"People will always keep secrets, Suzaku." A cricket chirruped somewhere to their left.

"That's not what I asked. Why did you sneak out of the mall past Shirley?"

"You're getting like Rolo. What do you mean, 'sneak?'  _I_ was the one being snuck up on, by the council president. Shirley knew where I was headed."

"Lelouch, just stop. I can't do this."

"And you think I can?" Lelouch looked aside. He purposely allowed his mask to slip, more than it already had. He threaded fingers into Suzaku's hair. He drew Suzaku down until his lips caressed Suzaku's ear, making his voice a low melody there. "As if I can even  _pretend_  to trust you, after what you did to me."

Suzaku shuddered, from head to toe. He made a sound like damp sand under shoes – as if every grain of his faith and his loyalty had just been stepped on. He didn't recover.

Lelouch talked on. "You deserve punishment."

Suzaku gasped, as next Lelouch's teeth pressed into his earlobe. Lelouch licked and nipped, until Suzaku was the one breathless.

Innocent Lelouch was saying,  _You shouldn't have left me alone so damn long. I wanted to touch you, so now I'll just tease, and make you feel the frustration I did._

Zero was saying,  _Yes, Suzaku. It's me. But I will never let you prove it. I'm completely justified. And by the way, I utterly hate you._

It was Zero's message Suzaku received, louder and clearer than anything else. Just for an instant, Lelouch wanted him to  _know_  – that Lelouch vi Britannia was trying to destroy him. He wanted Suzaku to feel guilty, afraid, if only for a heartbeat – before dear Lelouch Lamperouge took it back.

And take it back he did, so he could shut down new suspicion. Lelouch's mind was quicker with his renewed upper hand. He'd set Suzaku's grim assessments into useless spirals.

"Are you all right?" Lelouch asked next, allowing his deep voice to lift in concern. "I'm just trying to satisfy us both. Don't tell me… all this time away has really made you too uptight? You can't enjoy a thing like this?"

"Lelouch. I…."

"Do you want to skip on any intimacy, then, this time?"

"Lelouch—"

"Don't worry. It doesn't make me angry. I forgive you."

Lelouch massaged Suzaku's shoulders, pretending not to notice their uncharacteristic stiffness. He ignored Suzaku's web of frustration and self-hate, preferring to let it wind Suzaku tighter.

"Next time," he said, "just don't abandon your best friend. You won't feel like you do right now."

Suzaku stayed very, very still. Then, silently as a star's light winking out, a tear splashed on Lelouch's cheek.

"Really!" Lelouch cried, chastising him, faking astonishment and confusion.

He held Suzaku closer. Suzaku allowed the guiding touch.

"You can't take the slightest bit of teasing right now, can you! All right – I'm sorry that I got impatient. I'll help you to de-stress a bit, before your welcome party. You did what you had to, Suzaku; everyone understands. You're a knight – of course you want to climb the ranks, and friends have to be cast aside. I promise I won't blame you for keeping so silent. As for my strange depression about my boring life? It's my burden, not yours… and anyway, life's less dull when  _you're_  in it."

He smiled. Suzaku buried his face deeper in his shoulder.

"From now on, you and I can take it slow – until things calm down a bit."

Suzaku nodded, but his eyes remained moist.

Inside, Lelouch thought,  _Cry, Suzaku._

_Your tears change nothing._

_Zero's going to survive._


	7. Loopholes

Their new status quo was a tentative one – and falsely tender on Lelouch's part. Touches didn't happen unless they were accidental. They exchanged not even one brush of a kiss.

Suzaku acted gallant. Suzaku felt guilty. He tried hard to keep up his end of the act, but it challenged him, and he lost focus; Lelouch watched him get trapped inside the labyrinth plaguing them.

He himself managed to process. Recover. But after two days, Lelouch began to feel bad about what they were doing, too.

He tapped his pencil on his desk now, in class. The plan had been to plant these seeds of self-destruction and help Suzaku destroy himself. Lelouch started to wonder, though – watching Suzaku neglect to take good notes – if the seeds weren't too cruel, even under their warped circumstances.

The teacher said something about collateral damage. Lelouch continued not listening.

Suzaku would torture himself anyway, without Lelouch's subtle aid, Lelouch realized. Did Lelouch really need to micromanage the results, adding to them with vague signals and guilt trips and flirtations? Wasn't that just making himself vindictive – more vindictive than he needed to be? Lelouch should be concentrating on new results as Zero, not on ways to unravel Suzaku thread by glossy, gossamer thread.

He doodled a fleur-de-lis on his notepad. He'd done enough; men were mad and paranoid who poured gasoline onto a fire they'd already set. Lelouch still had his sanity, and thought of his methods as successful and reasonable.

"And so, rumors that Nero played his lyre and possibly sang as the city of Rome burned…."

Suzaku shifted in his chair, and Lelouch halted everything to glance at him.

Something else was happening to them, too. Something much worse than their practice in cruelty. The development made Lelouch want to abort his mission altogether. He wondered if Suzaku noticed it too.

Suzaku reached up to scratch his hair. Lelouch eyed the curve of his neck, feeling an uncertain bolt of desire.

They were falling back into patterns. Electricity flowed once more, a current down Lelouch's spine. He tore his eyes away, before he got caught in his staring.

The teacher droned. Lelouch wished he had C.C., maybe Kallen. Feminine wiles, to offset Suzaku's rippling torso, boyish smile, ruffled hair. Kaguya wanted to be Zero's wife…. Lelouch entertained the thought of allowing it, rolling his pencil around in his hand. Kaguya had green eyes, too, but were they any substitute for Suzaku's forest-deep ones? Ah – but who did Lelouch try to kid? Suzaku's eyes had not sparkled as expressively as Kaguya's for months and months. Instead, they flashed hatred. Or looked deeply torn. Every now and then, they might seem clear and normal, but never were they happy in the way his cousin's were.

And yet… the act had begun to consume them both. It grew easier to  _pretend_  they were happy, as lies nearly became the truth. Suzaku would catch himself in a laugh, and then stop, realizing it was only  _halfway_  a fake laugh that time, confused. Lelouch did the same, time and time again, stopping short whenever he realized he'd smiled warmly at the memory of a kiss.

Rivalz answered a question for the teacher. "Galba, in 68 C.E.!" He got the answer right for once, but Lelouch didn't chuckle afterward, to see him gloating. He still wasn't paying attention to class.

Something had to change, and fast. Whether Lelouch ought to give up on his act or let it eat him, he didn't know. He only knew he couldn't implicate himself. He didn't want to stay caught in limbo to avoid implication, however.

_Tch._ He'd have to move, and soon. But where to go from here, and how?

Lelouch looked at Suzaku again. Finally, Suzaku seemed to be intent on his history book.

If only he knew what might eradicate Suzaku's suspicions! Should Lelouch still keep distant, or move back to a pretended intimacy? Could Lelouch  _handle_  any more intimacy? Lelouch could not deny that after all Suzaku had done – yes, even now – his stomach clenched sometimes, when he caught Suzaku's scent, or met Suzaku's eyes, or looked at the pads of Suzaku's broad hands. Yes, he desired. He couldn't deny it. But did that mean he had to  _do_  something with it?

What would Suzaku do with it?

Lelouch entertained a new wild thought, turning a page in his book on ancient empires. What if he and Suzaku could reach a _different_ status quo – one where they did not need to be emotionally close, or pretend to be, but where physical closeness could still be entered into? Could they do that, without compromising their positions? Could Lelouch arrange for only sex?

He wondered it, doing his best not to pinken.

Then Lelouch realized Suzaku would declare love for the Geass before he would ever get intimate with Lelouch again – with Zero, the man he thought Lelouch had twice become.

Yes. Their standpoints had been clear upon Suzaku's arrival. If Lelouch tried anything related to attraction, Suzaku would grow twice as suspicious, and try to slip him up like Rolo had, before Rolo changed sides. And if that happened, Lelouch would get angry – and he would regress to square one again too. "Square one" being active hatred. Unhealthy for both of them.

But at least Lelouch could  _consider_  it. He sighed. Was it so wrong, to think about holding on to the small bits of civility they'd managed to achieve, through acting? How come – no matter how he played it out inside his mind – in every scenario, Suzaku reacted to him with pure loathing?

_Is it actually easier,_ Lelouch thought,  _or less painful for you, if the only thing you feel is hatred?_  The back of Suzaku's head didn't reply. In the end, was that the reason?

"Thusly, again, in successful empire, we see the strong devouring the weak…." The teacher didn't realize there was dandruff on her shoulders.

Did Suzaku  _prefer_  to think Lelouch was Zero? Should Lelouch lead him on some more, and give him a glimpse of his true self, to test it? Would risking himself like that truly be worth it?

Would Suzaku stand tall again for once, and strike a sense of goodness and morality into the hearts of those around him, if he believed more strongly again that Lelouch was hiding regained memories? Suzaku might become that old dashing knight, if his hatred for Zero more fully drove him on. Lelouch didn't  _want_  to be the object of Suzaku's hatred any more than now he wanted to wear himself out hating Suzaku, but what if making Suzaku think he was Zero was the only way to bring back Suzaku's spark? The only way to guarantee his overall wellbeing?

Lelouch didn't like it, but he wasn't a fan of the alternative, either. He could see changes in Suzaku's body language, if not on Suzaku's face. The same leeching of purpose was now happening to Suzaku, the way it had happened to Lelouch when Charles had Geassed him. Suzaku didn't know why he was fighting any more. He  _did_  have Zero, to accuse and oppose, but it struck Lelouch that if the Zero out there now were not  _actually_  Lelouch… perhaps Suzaku lost his passion.

A different Zero, a pretender, might not have the same methods and beliefs as Lelouch did, and therefore, battling  _him_ wouldn't feel quite as potent. Did Suzaku need to face down Lelouch specifically, in order to feel validated and driven? Was it because Suzaku respected Lelouch, despite all that had happened? Did Lelouch matter?

Lelouch put his elbow down hard on his desk. When Rivalz looked over, he feigned a dawning headache. The headache became real, though, as Lelouch clamped a palm against his forehead and kept thinking.

Shirley said, "Yes, Ma'am. The parallels between those Romans and Britannia."

His insides felt constricted and played with. Lelouch's desire to keep Suzaku healthy clashed with his urge and instinct for survival. Was he mad, to entertain notions like these – notions of healing and helping Suzaku?

He thought about being dragged down dark halls, his limbs numb from the bondage straps. He thought about the hard and cold tile floor, looking up at his father, who'd laughed and erased him.

The lead of Lelouch's pencil broke, as he pressed too hard in his haste to take notes. Shirley jumped and whispered, "Oh! Does Lelou need to borrow mine?"

_No, Suzaku_ , Lelouch decided.  _I will not risk myself further – and allow myself to be despised more and mistreated – simply because your happiness may depend on my misery._

"Thank you, Shirley."

Lelouch was no self-sacrificial fool. If he had a choice in whether he needed to suffer…. Even if it was for Suzaku, Lelouch refused to throw himself into the fire.  _Letting_  Suzaku demean him was daft; the only types of people who liked degrading themselves that way were…. Well, were people like Suzaku.

People who intended to  _survive_  were very different.

Still, Lelouch couldn't shake the realization that there was much he would yet give in order to unburden Suzaku somewhat. As long as it didn't compromise his secrets, his own health, or his pride, why not help Suzaku grasp relief? Wasn't that better than tension at Ashford? Ashford was supposed to be Lelouch's safe haven, but lately it had become a prison.

Shirley blushed and told him he was welcome. The teacher requested they again turn their pages.

The problem was figuring out what Suzaku really wanted, outside of his hate and his dependency on Zero. Or, was it instead more a question of  _need?_  What would make Suzaku smile, or laugh? Adversely, what would make him feel Lelouch had gone too far? Lelouch pondered all of this, watching Suzaku taking notes, until Suzaku glanced over, met his gaze, and promptly broke it, frowning.

Lelouch missed two lines of notes.

The frown wasn't one of Suzaku's dull, dark ones. He simply wore the kind of frown he used whenever he scolded himself, inside his own head, for a thing he enjoyed. Enjoyed, but felt that he shouldn't be doing. Lelouch had not seen that look on him for ages.

"Hmn?" Shirley blinked. "Is there something he wants to say to you, Lelouch?"

Rivalz hissed at Suzaku, under the teacher's voice, "Pass us a note, man. Let's do something awesome. These creepy emperors give me the shivers. Glad Britannia doesn't have someone as nuts as them…."

Lelouch said, "Rivalz, you've got to be joking."

"Quiet in the classroom," the teacher barked at them.

Suzaku peeked over, still wearing his frown.

Was eye contact with Lelouch so complex? Lelouch hadn't been trying to send any signals. He kept his face the picture of detached, as he continued listening to the teacher's lecture. Shirley turned red, and furiously scribbled with her back-up pencil, nodding in time to the teacher's remarks. What had gotten Suzaku so flustered?

Then Lelouch noticed. Suzaku appeared flushed in the tips of his ears. He twiddled his pencil a little too roughly, shifted in his chair a little too stiffly…. And then his firm grip on his writing utensil sharply and unfairly snapped it.

Shirley twitched. "S-Suzaku! I don't have another spare one!" Lelouch chilled, watching Suzaku set down the pieces, and Shirley twirled her carroty hair. "Boys are so careless! So careless!"

Lelouch's chill melted for something else. A hot reaction bubbled in him, stirred up by the undertones of Suzaku's body language. At first, Lelouch told himself not to believe it. Surely, he was projecting. He thought Suzaku grappled with it only because he grappled with it himself. But no, it was there. Lelouch lost focus on the classroom, while Shirley began fishing round for a pen.

Suzaku was thinking about it – attraction.

The spiral down from that conclusion felt like falling off a sky-train. Musing about their relations was one thing. Thinking and applying theory felt fine. Having the emotions in question manifest in the  _party_  in question, however, now, while Lelouch only tried to concentrate…. That kind of situation asked for trouble.

Lelouch wasn't prepared to combat it, surrounded by students, mere wooden desks away from Suzaku.

Without another thought – and before the grind of his teeth grew audible – he raised his hand so the teacher would see him. He excused himself, saying he needed to use the restroom. Rivalz lifted one eyebrow. Suzaku eyed him too, but didn't stiffen or glare, or appear like he'd count to thirty, then get up and follow. Lelouch knew Suzaku still might, but right now…. He needed a place with breathing room.

Shirley muttered, "You should also find a pencil."

Lelouch said, "No use; Suzaku would break it."

Suzaku accepted Shirley's pen and smiled. "Thank you, Shirley. I don't break things if they behave well."

Lelouch left, his pulse a thunder in his ears. He needed a place distinctly free of his enemy, and also far away from the gym room with Coach Villetta.

Lelouch walked down the hall, to the bubblers. He paused in front of them, thinking in tumbles. When he felt like he was safe, he began to pace, to counter the motion of his reeling mind. If anybody asked, he'd simply make like he'd been thirsty.

_Thirsty_. Thirsty…. Yes, Lelouch was parched.

Aching for a drink of Suzaku's poison.

He finally let a noise spill from him. "Tch…!"

Lelouch pasted a hand across his Geass eye, folded his opposite arm, and strove not to mutter more notes of frustration. He would not, he could not even  _consider_  using their buried attraction. For anything. Clearly it was better to crush Suzaku, destroy him.

So how come Lelouch was still thinking about it?

Some things, one just didn't do. Some lines just could not be crossed. The other night, in the garden Suzaku had erected…. Hadn't that been nothing but a twisted mockery? Lelouch remembered the way it had felt, wanting to vomit while they both pretended. The same damn thing would just happen again.

Even if  _Lelouch_ had felt – for half a second toward the end – a bolt of real desire waking….

Sexual desire, sexual interaction…. Intimacy was not supposed to be a toy! It was manipulative, to use their old attraction to domineer over Suzaku and fight Suzaku's suspicion. It would be equally manipulative to use it to lure Suzaku into a sense of contentment and security – reasons for wanting to do it be damned. Some lines, one just didn't cross. And really—

A different, blood-freezing thought consumed Lelouch next, so wholly that he halted between the bubblers and a poster board with the class ranks posted on it.

His hands fell limply to his sides.

He'd wondered why – when Charles had wiped his memories – there'd been a loophole. Lelouch had thought whoever had left it had either left it present out of ignorance, or of a desire to wait and see how Suzaku might employ it. But here  _Lelouch_ was, looking to employ it. To turn it to his advantage, by using it to craft a new status quo between himself and his worst enemy.

What if the loophole had been left for  _Lelouch_ , from the start? What if whoever tried to lord over him from the temple of Geass was sending him a message? Or worse, just wanting to amuse himself somehow, by watching Lelouch fall back into the trap of his own craving, watching Lelouch setting himself up to get hurt?

What if this was bait, to tempt Lelouch down an alternate path, instead of down the desperately important path of Zero?

Lelouch leaned over, with his hand braced on the wall. His other hand came up again to grip the bridge of his nose this time. His bangs drifted across his eyes.

Lelouch pulled himself and his careening thoughts together – or was it that he simply reined in all his paranoia? In any case. The passion they'd both felt was  _over_. Trap or no trap, this loophole was something Lelouch should never think of touching. Yet… he couldn't take his hand off the wall, knowing there was something else that niggled. A part of himself that played the Devil's Advocate. It always did.

That part of Lelouch whispered,  _But really, what's so wrong with it? Is it so wrong, if it's a thing you both desire?_ It brought him back to his earlier thoughts.

If there was a piece inside each of them where the want was real, what was wrong with indulging it, so long as both of them still understood the lines between satisfying basic sexual needs and fighting hard to change the world? If they could each manage to use their physical union detachedly, for no purpose other than for gaining some relief, then they  _could_  create a whole new status quo – where they received what they wanted sexually, but did not tear their minds and emotions apart. Because there'd be no real attachment in it. No adoration. No care.

And no love.

It had never been a relationship. They had never been called "lovers."

And Suzaku couldn't trample on what Lelouch was freely willing to give. If Lelouch allowed himself to be treated like Zero and hated, in order to grant Suzaku's wish for a rival, that would be stupid. But if Lelouch allowed himself to be touched and pleasured and held with those delicious hands, because he  _wanted_  it, regardless of Zero…. Well, that was something completely justifiable and different. He wouldn't lose any face – especially if Suzaku wanted it, too. It'd be a level playing ground. A mutual use of each other, resulting in a partial sort of truce – a truce at least in the bedroom, where they both so desperately needed the attention.

Lelouch sighed and finally pushed off from the wall. He could imagine what C.C. would say.  _I was correct, when I called you a pervert_. What about Kallen's opinion? And Shirley's? Would their visions of Lelouch change, if they knew he thought so much about sex? There had been a time Lelouch had not thought sex important. But in the face of so much pain, and death, and aggravation….

He shook his head. He didn't need to justify his natural body and its function to himself.

"Le~ _louch_ ~!"

Lelouch jerked his head up. Waves of blonde hair caught his eye, and then the slender finger that waved at him.

"Are you becoming a delinquent again, roaming the halls when you should be in class?"

Lelouch's shoulders relaxed. He broke into a smile. "And what are  _you_  doing here, Ms. President? It's okay for  _you_  to roam, because you're our commander?"

"I'm on my way to a meeting with our councilors, about Suzaku's place of honor at the annual festival."

Lelouch's stomach flipped again at mention of Suzaku. "Ah," he said. "You're going to embarrass him."

"Of course!" Milly smiled, and then outright laughed. "But don't be jealous, Lelouch. You know, the one I like embarrassing the most is always you."

"You'll never mature in some ways, will you, President." A flock of birds breezed past the hallway window, airy and fleeting – like the affected teasing in Lelouch's voice.

"Hmm? Maybe not. But I'm mature in other ways." Milly winked and squeezed her arms so that her breasts plumped up together.

"President!"

Milly burst into laughter. Then, she flung an arm around him, and started to guide him down the hall. "Lelou," she said, in a mock-severe tone, "I know you can't pretend very well. Even  _you_  think about intimate things. Don't hold back – who is it, then? Who's the person always on your mind?"

Several things happened at once. Lelouch ducked out from under Milly's arm. It occurred to him that  _she_  was the perfect woman to speak with, assuming Lelouch ought to speak to somebody. Lelouch also realized that Milly could read him. If she could do that, then soon worse people might be able to. Should Lelouch risk himself, to prevent further risks? Should he give Milly some details, to get some weight off his chest?

"Are you going to tell me what happened that Guys' Night?"

Lelouch blushed a cherry red. He hadn't brought it up, Guys' Night, because in truth, he wasn't sure how much his friends even remembered. There was no reason for Charles to have Geassed Guys' Night away from Milly's mind, but Lelouch recalled that there had been some talk of Zero – five minutes at least, over those tangy buffalo wings. He'd found it safest to assume that Charles had wiped out the whole evening because of it… but now Lelouch knew Charles hadn't. Because of his attraction with Suzaku? Because wiping more memories took up more Geass power?

But the other reason Lelouch hadn't tried to bring up Guys' Night was because—

"Lelouch, something has changed between you two."

Lelouch looked away, taking a careful breath. "My discussion with Suzaku that night went… too well." He'd been trying to avoid letting the student council learn that he and Suzaku had gone gay for each other.

Milly said, "Oh? Well, details please? And I hope you know that really, more than tease you, I want to look out for your happiness, Lelou."

His happiness. Lelouch didn't know what his happiness consisted of any more. "Are you going to give me a magical spell?"

"Aha! So you do need one!"

Lelouch looked at Milly, and this time didn't fake his tiny smile. He was caught somewhere between exasperation and gratitude. The gratitude part made his throat constrict.

He decided to take the risk, in a slightly broken voice he didn't fake. Surely there was someone he could still trust, in this mess? Milly had always been shrewd. Genuine.

"He makes me want to hurl him on a bed and tear his clothes off."

An expression passed over Milly's wide features, something like shock, knowing… and a flash of disappointment. In the time it took him to recognize it, a different expression rose.

One that made her look like she was trying not to pee her pants.

"HAH haha ha ha ha ha, Le _louch_! Hahaha!"

She couldn't breathe. Lelouch said sharply, "President."

"A violent urge for passion, huh? You like it rough? Ahahaha! You know, that could be dangerous, considering who you're talking about!"

"Milly Ashford."

He tried to hide the crackle of his nerves. He used the voice of a prince, despite that she no longer recalled his royal status.

"I know. I know you're serious, Lelouch. I'll help you, but I just— Who is the seme?"

Lelouch blinked. "Seme?" he repeated. Her language grew ridiculous.

"You want to be with Suzaku, who's Japanese, but you don't even know the right terms you should use?"

"What do you mean, 'be with?'" She'd said  _Japanese_ and not  _Eleven_. "All I want from him is—"

"Oh,  _Lelouch_."

Milly dropped everything but her concern. It stopped Lelouch cold, the way she seemed to let a mask drop, in which he could see clearly into her soul.

They were similar people, weren't they.

"I do believe Suzaku's worth it. I do. But is he what you need? Won't you please consider Shirley Fennette?"

Lelouch's heart pounded. "No. Shirley's too—"  _Precious._ Lelouch had been about to call her "precious."

He still cared for Shirley. She was his close friend. Involvement with him would just bring Shirley down. The carnal lust of the equation cast aside, it came down to the fact that Suzaku Kururugi could survive the perils that came with Lelouch better than Shirley ever could.

He didn't complete his sentence, or make up excuses. Let Milly fill the gaps the way she wanted. Lelouch stood under her stare – she had her hand posed on her chin – and allowed her to look thoughtful, assessing what he wanted.

"You really want to sleep with him?"

"Seduce him. Seduction is where I'll be headed." If Lelouch chose to do this, he'd have to move from the beginning again.

"What a coy Vice President."

Lelouch said nothing.

"Just promise me something."

Milly, extracting promises? She didn't often do so. Not unless they were ludicrous ones, designed for her own fun-fulfillment.

Lelouch motioned for her to keep talking. His heart thudded hard in his chest.

"Don't hurt him, Lelouch. Whatever he's done, Suzaku is a good boy deep at heart."

Her face was so serious that it gave Lelouch another chill. He wanted to respond,  _You don't know him any more_.

He didn't need to. Milly changed her look. "After all, I am the mother of this bunch. I can't allow my children to fight, even over something fun like huge sexual tension."

Lelouch didn't comment that she made it sound like incest.

"I'll help you, Lelouch. For the sake of the council. And in return, I expect you to look out for their wellbeing, too."

"I've always done that." Lelouch really, always had.

Milly held a finger to her lip, outlining a plan. "All right then. Go to the rooftop, at the end of the festival. You both like it up there, I've noticed? During the dancing, I'll send Suzaku up. He'll be all for you. I'll send him with  _ideas_." Lelouch flushed at the way she pronounced it. "Then you can take the plan over from there."

* * *

Lelouch was glad he'd turned his back. Even near-foolproof plans could collapse.

"Big brother? Is it really you?" The voice came high-strung over the phone.

_Milly,_  Lelouch thought, as his lungs forgot they ought to work like bellows,  _I don't know what you told Suzaku, but this isn't how I wanted it to go._

It wasn't Milly's fault, Lelouch knew. Suzaku had done this on his own.

Lelouch forgot all ideas he'd developed about healing Suzaku, and made his next moves – as calmly as he could under the pressure. He told Nunnally how much he loved her, and watched Rolo leave after counting the seconds.

Lelouch plotted retaliation.

He told Suzaku, in a sharp tone, "Let's go to my bedroom, before you make more people call me. There's something I'd like to discuss there, in private."

Suzaku frowned. Lelouch knew why.

He'd never spent time in Lelouch's bedroom.

It smacked of suggestion, a setting like that. But C.C. didn't live there any more, so Lelouch could use the bedroom for suggestion if he wanted.

He did want to. Evilly. Right now, specifically to make the situation more uncomfortable.

Suzaku tailed him down the stairs, and through the halls, and into his dark quarters. They stopped in the center of the space; Lelouch had turned on only one small, dim light. Suzaku's gaze flicked from Lelouch's clean desk, to his firmly locked wardrobe, to his neatly made bed.

His gaze settled next on Lelouch, unimpressed. "The new viceroy has a sweet personality, but a double handicap. The public will learn more later, but I think she'll be good for Area 11's—"

"The viceroy isn't important right now."

Every ounce of blood in Lelouch boiled. There would be  _no more using Nunnally_. His knees wanted to buckle – his sister was alive – but she ought not to be treated like an ace Suzaku could pull. He would change the subject.

Suzaku monitored him. "You don't want to discuss her?"

"No. Why would I?" Lelouch snapped. "You just made a fool of me in front of her! Suzaku, I shouldn't even be  _speaking_  to the viceroy. Whatever you're playing at, I'm getting sick of it. And you." He gripped the bridge of his nose between his fingers, in a grasp after control that was genuine. Through the fringe of his bangs, he watched Suzaku's expression darken. Tense, as if he prepared for attack.

Suzaku just might get one, if he wanted.

"You think you can maneuver me, Suzaku," Lelouch accused, tartly, lowering his voice, "but you can't.  _That's_ what I prefer to talk about. You're treating me like a criminal lately; if you think I can't sense it, you're insulting my intelligence. Surely you don't think I've started cheating on you? Courting Shirley? It's like you suspect me of having killed your cat, but instead of finding evidence, you want to force me to confess it. What have I done, Suzaku, to deserve it? My own best friend looks at me these days like I'm someone else."

Lelouch had been waiting to spring this confession. He'd saved it up – for just such a situation. A situation when Suzaku started with the upper hand.

"You figured it out?" Suzaku lacked real expression.

Lelouch concealed his outrage and surprise. "Yes. Who do you think I am?"

He gave Suzaku a beat, to register the double meaning. He added, "Do you take me for an idiot? Suzaku – you're the object of my darkest desire. I can tell when you're acting too strangely. You can't even touch me any more. When I said, 'take it slow' for you, I wasn't thinking 'like molasses.'"

The best way to defer suspicion was to flip it around – make the suspecter into the suspected. The words  _darkest desire_  had a clear affect as well. Suzaku swallowed, then looked at Lelouch's window curtains.

"What is it, Suzaku? What do you think I've done? Has it occurred to you that all this might be hurting me? It's upsetting, to see you cold and distant. If  _you're_  the one who's hiding something, better to admit it." He inserted the hint of a plead in his tone.

This time, however, it did not have an effect. No guilt leaked into Suzaku's eyes.

Damn. Lelouch had to play this game right. After all, Suzaku used  _Nunnally_. If he failed, it grew possible that she—

"Lelouch, I think you might be Zero."

Lelouch stared at Suzaku, openly stunned. Was Suzaku completely crazy? What might this do to their pretended friendship? An innocent Lelouch would find an accusation like that so annoying.

"No," Suzaku stated, "that isn't accurate. I think you  _are_  Zero, and you're lying to my face. Right now."

Lelouch's command of himself fiercely wavered. His voice shot octaves higher than it normally was – but he still pretended calm. "Have they mangled your brain, in all that military testing?"

Suzaku remained looking corpse-like and heartless. "That confirms it."

His voice was so sure Lelouch almost believed it.

He took a step backward, to make like his head reeled. "Are you serious? You think  _I'm_  Zero? Hah – is that why I just talked to the viceroy?" Suzaku answered nothing, gave Lelouch nothing to work with. "Does the viceroy know who Zero really is? What, was my talk with her meant to confirm it? Don't make me laugh, Suzaku. How obnoxious. You know me better than anyone! What proof have you had, that would make you think I'm Zero?"

"You're very good at pretending, Lelouch."

Lelouch paused. He didn't have to fake his fear. He did his best to transform it into hubris. "Oh? And what will you do if I am? Don't you know that what you're spewing is nonsense?"

"Yes. But it's also the truth. It's more than you ever gave me." Suzaku started to walk toward him, calmly, with the poise of a stealth-killer.

Lelouch backed into the desk behind him. He had never planned for direct, open accusation. He hadn't believed that Suzaku would dare. After all, if Suzaku accused his best friend, and Lelouch was innocent…. Surely Suzaku knew it would sow discord between them? For Suzaku to accuse him like this meant Suzaku had thrown even the  _chance_  of renewed friendship out the window. It meant Suzaku didn't care any more – not even a little. It meant perhaps he never had.

Perhaps he'd just faked his attraction, to build up Lelouch's sense of security.

The blow struck Lelouch in his pride. His fear expanded; he needed to redouble his efforts, if he wanted to escape this confrontation still unscathed.

Suzaku stepped up to him, emerald eyes glassy. "I plan to arrest you, in the name of the Emperor. Will you come, or do I have to drag you?"

Drag him. In bondage, like he had last time? Lelouch became icy. How dare he,  _how dare_  Suzaku! They looked at each other – the predator, the fatally-snared prey – and something in Lelouch clicked into place at last.

Why had he ever bothered with Suzaku? To think he could still make Suzaku his own knight! Lelouch was Zero – and Zero used pawns best. Pawns were controlled, they did not do controlling. Suzaku would never get away with this.

Lelouch began to laugh – a laugh that cracked him open.

Suzaku stood there and watched the laugh bubble, not even bothering with a reaction.

" _Suzaku!_ " cried Lelouch, sharply – and with a low, resonating command. "You have either gone completely mad, or your tastes are stranger than I once imagined!" He had a new plan. He'd put it to action.

Suzaku waited for Lelouch to complete his new performance.

"If you have some sort of buried, secret desire for the figure of Zero, and you wanted to use it inside the bedroom, you should have just told me, don't you agree?"

Suzaku's eyes shot open wide. Lelouch worked wildly to control his murderous grin.

He'd had to scrabble, but he'd managed to do it. Come up with something Suzaku could not conquer.

Suzaku took a moment to recompose himself, and then he said, his voice grating, "That's twisted."

"Hah –  _I'm_ twisted? You implied it."

_How's this, President?_  Lelouch thought, unsteady on his feet.  _How is_ this  _game, for beginning seduction?_

Lelouch felt sick, but he played on, knowing that if he didn't, he'd only become cornered. "It might be unhealthy, to have such obsessions. But if you want to explore them, who am I to argue? I'm sorry if I didn't quickly catch your blaring signals. I didn't foresee that your rivalry with Zero would translate into frustrations that then transcended into bedroom desires."

Lelouch ignored the quaking of Suzaku's callused fingers.

"Role play! I see.  _This_ is how to de-stress you."

Suzaku's scowl – his radiating outrage – nearly started flames, until he could have burned down Ashford. Searing, ash-thick fires smoldered in him. Lelouch wanted to laugh again, and increasingly louder.

Instead, he touched Suzaku's lower stomach. Suzaku hissed and made to snatch his hand. Before he could, Lelouch walked his fingers languidly up Suzaku's chest.

His touch hovered right over Suzaku's heart. Lelouch leaned in and whispered, "Kururugi Suzaku." He used Zero's deeply ringing voice. "Would you sleep with me, and help me bring this world to justice?"

Suzaku made a noise like breaking plaster – dry, like buildings crumbling – while Lelouch serenely and smartly retreated.

In case Suzaku tried to kill him.

Lelouch smiled. "How was that?" he uttered, feigning fascination. "You know, Milly has been helping with my acting. There's part of our next festival—"

Suzaku lost his slim grip on control. In one swift move that made Lelouch's balance tilt, Suzaku forced him hard against the desk.

His strength made Lelouch's survival instinct kick in. Lelouch wondered if this was what it felt like, being slave to a Geass that made someone 'live.'

Lelouch said, mercilessly, and rather coyly, "We don't have a safe word set up yet; you really shouldn't."

"You are beyond guarantees of your safety." The words were a hiss, from the mouth a snake.

"Oh?" Lelouch paused. "Oh, Suzaku. Admit it. You desperately,  _desperately_  want to fuck him." Another beat passed. "Is it the mask? The cape?"

Suzaku backhanded Lelouch in the face.

Pain exploded, the way Knightmare Frames did when the Guren Mk-II attacked them.

Lelouch reflected that perhaps he'd been too coarse. He wasn't sure how his head had snapped around – so that now he gazed in double-vision at the floor – and therefore he stayed there a little bit longer, regaining composure. Suzaku lowered his arm.

Suzaku announced, "I'm not attracted to Zero."

The words were jagged, tart, and hard. The message was for the awakened Zero, for Lelouch here, in front of him.

Lelouch straightened against the desk. He didn't look at Suzaku, for fear he would find something on the desk's surface with which to slit Suzaku's throat. He'd do it.

"Need I remind you, again… that in these situations… people usually use safe words? Even if it's role play, hitting me is unacceptable. If this isn't role play, convince me  _why_  I must be Zero. The accusations you just made have not been taken lightly."

The first hint of confliction zipped across Suzaku's face, like summer lightning, looking like it faintly prickled. Suzaku swallowed. He backed off.

"I'm sorry," he said, in a cool, neutral tone.

Lelouch understood god damn well that Suzaku was  _not_  sorry. Not whatsoever. He dug his claws into Suzaku's flash of hesitation and twisted. He thought,  _I'll_ make  _you sorry, then._

"I'm not Zero. That is utterly impossible. If you insist on doing this to me, I hate to think of how it would affect our arrangement."

"Arrangement?" Suspicion high in Suzaku's eyes.

"This one," Lelouch said, taking Suzaku by the hips the way Suzaku often did him.

Suzaku let him, making a face like his skull had become the inside of a hive. Lelouch traced the hem of Suzaku's uniform.

"Don't tell me I'm second to some dramatic, masked vigilante. I don't think I can stand it, Suzaku."

Suzaku returned the loose embrace, thoughtlessly, closing his grip on Lelouch's narrow waist. His mind grappled with something else, Lelouch could tell. It finally showed on Suzaku's face.

At least that was a small improvement. Lelouch, becoming unbearably weary, made his last wild decision.

Their loophole. He'd use it. What other options did Lelouch have left, other than making a choice that exploited it?

He let his hand slip to Suzaku's cold cheek. Suzaku started; he tried to draw away.

Lelouch didn't let him. He held those green eyes. "Why," he began, wearily, "do you want so badly for me to be Zero?"

Suzaku's voice broke. He uttered, "I don't."

"Then isn't it enough, to trust me when I tell you  _I'm not him?_  I don't want to be Zero to you, either. I don't want to role play him." He traced the well-formed bone that ran beneath Suzaku's cheek.

Suzaku's grip at Lelouch's waist tightened.

Lelouch next traced Suzaku's jaw. "Why do you make me put up with your mood swings?"

"Lelouch, they aren't swings. It's the life of a soldier. The life of someone plagued by work of Zero."

"Who is not here," Lelouch annunciated. He wondered again if Suzaku would cry. "You know, you're letting work get in the way of perfectly good recreation."

"I'm— I'm eliminating distractions that get in the way of my work and my advancement. I'm trying so hard, for everyone's sake. I really do want to become Knight of One."

"It's a noble aim. If it works, you will have triumphed. But  _I_  don't have to be one of your distractions." Lelouch began to lean in, tempting. "Or, if I am, I'd like to be one of the good ones."

Suzaku's troubled eyes got caught on the lips Lelouch had deliberately passed his tongue over.

"Lelouch—"

Lelouch stretched a hand into the space between their brushing hips. "I've told you before to let me take the burden off you. Any more of this, Suzaku, and you'll snap…." He ran his hand against a quite suggestive area.

Suzaku stiffened. "Don't, Lelouch."

"You'd like this from me, though, wouldn't you?" His hand began stroking, and Suzaku groaned.

Just like that, Lelouch made use of loopholes – hiding his fury behind more walls of passion. Suzaku let out one more frustrated sound.

_If Zero can't stand you, I'll prove Lelouch can. I'll give you every inch of me, and take every inch back, Suzaku._ I _will be the person in control_.

Suzaku would never take him by surprise like that again.

Suzaku's breath grew ragged, and his protests quickly slowed. Lelouch held him close, with an iron-clamp grip – working his arm, not allowing Suzaku to pull away. He guided, so that Suzaku rocked hips against his hand. He dropped little words of affection and encouragement.

"Yes, Suzaku, just like that. Come closer, ah—you're getting hard…."

_I'm going to leave you a beautiful mess. Suzaku, I'll use you. I'm going to_ win _._

What had he been thinking, about mutual sexual use? Truces? Agreement? Lelouch cared nothing for Suzaku's emotions, or his side of the equation, or his wellbeing any more. Who cared if Suzaku's heart became twisted, or if he grew unhealthy from so much manipulation? Suzaku had put  _himself_  in this fool position.

When this night was over, Suzaku would never, ever think again that Lelouch recalled being Zero. That was all that mattered.

"Lelouch, it's too much. Not right here. Not yet. I'm—"

Lelouch murmured that Suzaku had to be kidding. "To ask me to stop, when you've gotten like this?"

He did a thing he'd never done. He tugged down Suzaku's boxer-briefs, and looked coolly on the part of his once-friend that was reacting so desperately to his touches.

He turned them both around, so that Suzaku leaned on the desk. Suzaku began breathing erratically, squeezing the desk edge and trying to keep purchase.

Lelouch stroked his hand once along Suzaku's bare length, feeling a thrill when Suzaku bit his lip to stifle a groan. Green eyes brimmed still with confliction. And with lust.

Lelouch had never done these things, and this was not how he'd intended to learn them. In a low, careful murmur, he bid Suzaku trust him, and asked Suzaku to sit down in the dimly yellow lamplight. When Suzaku had half-collapsed into Lelouch's desk chair, Lelouch stood back and stripped out of his Ashford uniform. He conceded to himself that engagement of this sort could be worse. He should attempt to bear it.

The orchestra music from the festival below accompanied his movements, and Suzaku watched him undress, appearing flushed and fascinated. Once in a while, though, too, there was hatred. Apprehension. Self-loathing.

Lelouch would erase it. He wondered if that made him 'seme' or not, and then he didn't care; he helped Suzaku take off his clothes as well.

Just the clothes on top. Lelouch wanted to leave them with their pants. He let Suzaku keep  _his_  pants down a bit, around his thighs, away from his weeping erection – but Lelouch staunchly kept his own pants on. He didn't want to expose everything. Not yet. He caught sight of Suzaku's bare torso and heated.

Not just yet, because tonight was about Suzaku.

He leaned over Suzaku in the chair, so their naked shoulders brushed, and so Lelouch could reach Suzaku with a hoarse, enticing whisper. "This has taken us too long."

"Lelouch. My God, we shouldn't even do it." Suzaku flinched, as Lelouch hovered over his chair, seeming to know his protests were late. Senseless.

"Why not, if it's something we both want?" He nuzzled Suzaku's inviting ear.

"Are you sure we really want it?" Suzaku's smooth voice cracked.

Lelouch felt stricken. Nauseated.

Much too late to turn back now.

"Don't talk nonsense; of course I really want you. And I think  _this_  point speaks for itself." Lelouch did not wait any more; he closed his hand firmly around Suzaku's erection.

"Ah—!"

He tried not to let Suzaku's gasping excite him.

Lelouch wasn't sure if he would feel awkward, degraded, or simply like a woman performing her man's service, pleasuring Suzaku this way. Lelouch stayed standing behind Suzaku's chair, leaning down, feeling Suzaku's erection throb against his steady palm. Lelouch watched his charge turning flush – and finally something carnal in Lelouch snapped into place.

In truth, Lelouch had never felt more male than he did now, with Suzaku gripped securely in his hand.

"I'm flattered, Suzaku," he murmured, deciding he'd enjoy the process fully.

His long, pale fingers wrapped around. Lelouch took possession of the part of Suzaku that gave him all will and control. Lelouch's wrist moved easily, from the place he hovered. He squeezed just enough, and slowly pumped. Exhilarating, to feel Suzaku swell that much more.

Lelouch made sure to slide his grip all the way to Suzaku's base, and pause to run his thumb against his tip on the way up. Suzaku felt so full, and so poised in his grip, and Lelouch swiftly found a rhythm that was steady.

"Lelouch,  _Lelouch_ … We—ah, aahn—!"

The thick feel of him, and the way his hand fit, and that first deep reaction of vocals….

Lelouch sharply heated. He picked up his pacing, working his fingers to vary the pressure. Suzaku's hips began to twist and jerk; Lelouch enjoyed watching them rise to his provocation. Soon Suzaku tensed and sought more of his hand.

Lelouch wanted to make Suzaku fall apart, make him truly buck, make him start to piston those sleek hips into Lelouch's smooth, attentive hand. Lelouch's eyes seemed unable to look anywhere else – nowhere now but at Suzaku's hips, and at his straining, ready member. Perfectly, appealingly formed, all of him. Had Lelouch known he would think these things, even now, after Suzaku's betrayal?

Lelouch's breathing became a bit short, while Suzaku worked and rocked into his hand. All Suzaku's subtle gasps, his groans…. They fueled Lelouch's ardor and turned him to a furnace, before he could control it. His skin burned; he felt his cheeks radiate heat, so much heat that he suddenly felt dizzy.

Lightheaded, as Suzaku's length continued mesmerizing him. Lelouch's lips remained parted. He wanted to lick them so they wouldn't chap, but one moment lost, one move not for Suzaku now threatened to throw Lelouch out of his rhythm. And rhythm, that rhythm. It made pleasure  _burn_.

He wanted to drown Suzaku in waves of satisfaction.

Suzaku wasn't desperate. Not yet. But all too suddenly, Lelouch realized  _he_  was.

Yes, Lelouch was – feeling Suzaku inside his hand, picturing that length of him in other, tighter places. He ached; he felt unhinged, and wild, and he made an instinctive, sudden, rough decision.

"Lelouch—?"

Lelouch moved around in front. He dropped to his knees.

Suzaku looked weak, uncomprehending – basted with a sheen of sweat that made him glisten and Lelouch want hard to moan. He pushed Suzaku's thighs apart.

Suzaku realized what Lelouch was about. "Wait. You shouldn't—"

"Let me," Lelouch uttered. "Let me."

If Suzaku refused, Lelouch feared what he'd be driven to do.

He took Suzaku into his mouth.

First, just the tip, that he ringed with his lips, while twirling his tongue there so Suzaku shivered. The act made pleasure roll in Lelouch's chest, and resonate somewhere else he only half acknowledged. Suzaku didn't taste like Lelouch would have thought – bitter, or acidy, or anything like that. Lelouch took a moment, getting used to the flavor, feeling that thickness slide against his tongue. Something fairly mild, maybe soft – like Suzaku himself had been, back when they were innocent. When he wasn't piloting a Knightmare frame, or hating Lelouch, or trying to kill him.

Lelouch dipped his head, and took Suzaku's whole length – in increments – into his mouth. And Lelouch didn't struggle with it; it didn't feel hard to do. Suzaku was certainly big, and thick – but tantalizingly, satisfyingly so. Lelouch thought holding him this way felt natural. He grew twice as turned on. He slid off Suzaku, and then back, running his tongue along that length and feeling crazy.

He choked on a moan. He'd  _wanted this._  He hadn't known how much until now.

Suzaku's teeth sank into the flesh on the back of his wrist, like dull knives, and he bucked. His face was splashed with pleasure, pain, while Lelouch sucked, and slurped, and kept glancing up. Whatever Suzaku saw when Lelouch met his glance made him groan, so Lelouch held eye contact again.

He licked indecently up the underside of Suzaku's length, keeping his hand rubbing against Suzaku's base, and it made Suzaku bite his wrist twice as hard.

But no sound. Lelouch couldn't take it. He pulled off.

"Don't be silent," he gasped. Suzaku understood, but shook his head, and sealed his eyes back up and bit down more. "Suzaku. Rolo's outside with the others. His room isn't even near here. There's no need to hold back."

"Lelouch—you don't understand—"

The protest was what Lelouch had waited for.

"Nnh—aah!"

Suzaku, caught off guard, was not prepared for the slick return of Lelouch's mouth upon his erection. He couldn't stem his waterfall of sounds. "Mn,  _mmn_ —ah! Aaahn— _Lelouch_ —!"

Lelouch felt like he floated, dizzy, as everything in him was wiped out by lust. He licked and sucked, and moaned himself, when Suzaku wound fingers into his hair. He didn't care about Geass, or Zero – just give him this reckless and pleasure-wracked Suzaku.

Suzaku, writhing under his command. Suzaku, making Lelouch ache for some deeper form of union, for equality inside their wanton situation, compensation. He realized, vaguely horrified, that he himself had grown erect; Lelouch strained at his Ashford pants, his own want now a sharp, painful affliction.

Suzaku cried out again, and Lelouch pulled off, slickly pumping instead with his free hand.

With his other hand, he tugged Suzaku down – by the neck, so their lips met. Suzaku couldn't control his side of the kiss while Lelouch was still pumping. The exchange of teeth and tongues was wet, and sloppy, and everything Lelouch had never, ever been, but everything he so violently required of Suzaku, and then—

Suzaku went rigid, and then absolutely  _wild_  in Lelouch's hand. Before he could release, Lelouch let Suzaku's neck go, and sucked with his mouth on Suzaku's solid length. Suzaku spilled over, a slippery mess – against Lelouch's tongue, his lips – so that Lelouch slurped and moaned and finally swallowed.

Suzaku looked down at him in surprise, eyes pleasure-clouded. He hadn't missed the difference.

"Y…you didn't have to—"

"Don't talk, Suzaku."

Lelouch said it breathlessly, rocking back on his heels… because they'd finished, and he wasn't sure now how to act. He mimicked the way Suzaku slumped, as if he were an entity quite boneless.

His body felt hot. His head still reeled. He realized – feeling slightly sick yet somehow satisfied – how intensely he had loved that. How deliciously intense—

He trembled, wanting to do that to Suzaku over again.

Suzaku said, "I—"

"It's late. You should go back." The orchestra had long stopped playing. "If there's anybody still here," Lelouch went on, "they're going to want to see the Knight of Seven."

What had Lelouch done? He'd gone and done this, and he'd  _liked it_. More than he could possibly have imagined he would like it. Even in his most private dreams, back when he and Suzaku were truly intimate, he hadn't realized it would feel quite like  _this_  when bigger things actually happened.

Lelouch hadn't been able to put it aside when he  _did_ realize! Even after getting slapped across the face, even after being made to speak to Nunnally. What was going to become of them? Cursed, awful, damned attraction….

Suzaku watched Lelouch as Lelouch tried to sort his thoughts. Then Suzaku got up. He buttoned on his shirt and told Lelouch, "I'm overwhelmed."

Lelouch didn't have energy left to analyze what the sentence meant. Whether it was genuine, whether his plan had worked, or whether this was the Suzaku who still felt grim suspicion.

Suzaku completed the rest of his statement. "If I go out there, everyone is going to know I just received the most fantastic blow job."

Lelouch flushed, his eyes overblown, and then he almost chuckled.

Almost. He said instead to Suzaku, "Then just don't show it to them. Put on a mask."

Suzaku was the one to chuckle then. "Can't. I bet it's all over my face, so much that it would show despite whatever lies I told them." He walked with his jacket in hand, to where Lelouch still sat upon the ground.

Lelouch didn't know if he wanted to scream, cackle, or sob at that damnable wording. Were those words innocent, sincere? Meant to stab? Meant to be another threat? Lelouch swallowed his conflicting emotions.

He smirked, running along with Suzaku's joke. "I can think of other things I'd like to see all over your face—"

Suzaku leaned down and kissed him.

Lelouch lost himself for a long, dreary instant. When Suzaku drew back, Lelouch decided that at least right now, Suzaku would not sneak into his room come bedtime and savagely try to arrest him. As for the rest, Lelouch would have to wait and see.

"Watch the viceroy's speech tomorrow."

_Oh, Suzaku_ ,  _why do we have to do this?_

"Do I have a choice?" Lelouch replied, wryly. "The whole school has to watch it at assembly. Come visit me again, if they let you take off work."

Over and over, was this what would happen? Was the only thing Lelouch achieved an ever-more painful web of deception?

Suzaku left his bedroom like a cat, quietly, the only sound the clicking doorknob in his wake. Lelouch tried his best to climb to his feet.

He ran the longest, coldest shower of his life, refusing to touch himself no matter how he burned to. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't, he wouldn't. Even though he thought about green eyes, and holding Suzaku in his mouth….


	8. Poison

Lelouch returned from the seaside with the salt air in his hair. The clock on his replacement cell phone glared that it was nine minutes past midnight, and the display made his eyes hurt. He'd been awake now for well over thirty-six hours; sleep was a function he barely remembered. He wished he hadn't split his favorite phone in half and thrown it off the sky train. But when one was lagging in soul as well as body, sometimes decisions weren't—

Decisions worked out wrong.

Milly and Shirley were still on the rooftop; Lelouch could hear their voices drifting down as he walked to the clubhouse. The sound of their giggles and whispers felt soothing. He didn't hear Rivalz, so he assumed Rivalz had gone to bed – leaving Shirley and Milly to enjoy what Lelouch supposed Milly would call Girls' Night.

Lelouch went inside and walked to the bathroom. Flicked the light on. Filled the sink bowl up with soapsuds, thinking about the bubbles Zero had used to sink a fleet of battleships. He washed his face, and combed the sea-scent from his hair. He found out Rolo had gone to bed. Then, inside of collapsing in bed himself, he quietly made his way back to the rooftop.

Shirley and Milly looked up and released twin exclamations.

"Lelou, you're back already?" Shirley said, as Milly laughed and told him, "The golden boy who's not so golden returns!"

Shirley added, "I thought you had to run all the way to the farthest hospital, to get Rolo and take him home after his awful fall!"

"Rolo is all right," Lelouch said. "He's just gone to bed. And you two still have fireworks."

The rooftop garden smelled like roses, and both the girls – roses in their own right – looked at him and exchanged glances.

"Oh?" said Milly, only slightly delayed. "So you're jealous. All this time, you wanted to light a firework yourself. You had to come all the way back here to do it?"

"Yes, that was definitely it," Lelouch conceded, rolling his eyes, and asked if she would let him do it or not.

Milly climbed up from where she sat, brushing her skirt. Shirley began rifling through the box of fireworks. She held up a valiant looking gold and white striped one, and a boldly bright crimson one that looked like it'd be loud. She asked which one Lelouch wanted. He hesitated.

"Or how about this one?" Milly asked, handing Shirley a third firework. "It explodes into a huge, purple glitter-rain, and fizzles out slowly as it drifts down – the kind that looks like a pretty weeping willow!"

"How about an orange one, like Shirley's hair?" Lelouch said. Shirley blushed and scrambled through the box.

Milly watched her, walking to Lelouch's side, hands on her hips. "Why did you really come back?" she asked in a low voice, while Shirley's hind side stuck up as she bent. Lelouch made sure to glance away. "You look tired. Has Suzaku been keeping you—"

"It's nothing," Lelouch told her, trying not to twitch his hands. "In fact, if you talk about that, I might leave." Milly watched him, expressionless, but Lelouch held up under the assault. "That one, Shirley," he said, when she pulled out a candy-cane striped one and announced, "It makes gold stars!"

Milly relaxed. Soon, a slow smile spread on her face. "You know, Lelouch, as your president, I'm proud. This is the longest stretch of time you've spent with us in ages. When you disappear like that, you don't usually come back."

Shirley bit her lip and nodded, messing with a fuse. "That's right!"

Lelouch forgot Suzaku and chuckled softly, watching the two of them flit about the garden. Milly worked with the firework stand and Shirley hunted around for a lighter. Lelouch wanted to tell them how good it felt – to know he could still smile when they all had fun together, and that  _that's_  why he had come back. They helped him remember he still had a reason to be Zero – even without Nunnally.

He'd make a better world for  _them_. Milly, and Shirley, and especially Kallen, despite that she couldn't be here right now…. They all knew what Lelouch needed for his peace of mind, and what Lelouch needed to do, despite that they never had known and never could know who he was completely. It made Lelouch feel grateful, and he…. He wanted to express that gratitude.

"Ready?" asked Shirley, handing him the lighter. "Don't forget to plug your ears!"

The  _bang_  vibrated in Lelouch's chest, and he stood there mesmerized by the  _POP-fizzle… shhhhh_. The glimmer came down like blossom petals.

"Are you going to cry again, Lelouch?" asked Milly slyly. "Twice in one night?"

All he could do was affect a sigh and ask if there were still any sodas to share.

They laughed. They stayed up until two, talking about school and news and parents, and what they wanted to do to out in the world.  _How is this?_  Lelouch thought, his mind wandering back to Suzaku reluctantly – and to Rolo, with his proposition to throw Zero away and be a student.  _A normal life, like everyone thinks I should have_. Happiness in the form of many pretty panes of glass. Even if he couldn't see it, it was always there. Lelouch took the time to enjoy it, when he could.

He realized that Milly was saying good night. He and Shirley watched her go. Lelouch was lying down on his back, with his head resting in Shirley's lap; Shirley sat with her legs folded beneath her.

When Milly left, a silence passed. Lelouch sighed peacefully and closed his eyes.

"L-Lelou?"

"What is it, Shirley?"

"Um, can I… um, I-I…. C-can I pet your hair?" The words ran fast together, more like  _CanIpetyourhair?!_. Lelouch snapped his eyes open. She said, "I mean—oh no. L-Lelou, I'm sorry! It's not being weird; I didn't mean it in a weird way. It's just that you look tired and someone – I think it was Rolo – told me once that people have better dreams when someone is there to pet their head – n-not that you're like a stuffed toy or anything and I can just pamper you because you're pretty, or that you should sleep if you don't want to, that's not what I—I know you don't like being touched, and I definitely meant more handsome than pretty, s-so actually—"

Lelouch watched her spluttering from his upside-down vantage point, and after a moment, he cut her off. He chuckled.

"Lelou!"

"Shirley," he said. "I don't mind if you touch me."

He closed his eyes again so she could recover. It seemed all of a sudden, however, that she felt the need to squirm. For a long moment, there was nothing.

Then long, delicate fingers started brushing through his hair.

"Mmn." Lelouch made a sound of approval. Shirley's hand abruptly stopped, then kept on going, her fingers combing through his bangs and prickling against his scalp, in a manner that made him remember days of tenderness he'd thought forever lost.

"Lelou?" she asked softly, after a time. He had very nearly drifted into sleep. "Has everything been all right, lately?"

Lelouch didn't answer her, for a long time. Her lap was comfortable, her touch so earnest and soft…. He didn't want to interrupt it. And he didn't want to lie to her, like this.

"No, it hasn't," he told her plainly.

Shirley stiffened.

He said, "But it's getting better. Please don't worry yourself on my account."

Her hand paused again in his hair. Then she laughed, nervously, and started stroking just behind his ear. Lelouch tilted half-consciously into the touch, saying again, deeply, "Mmn."

It caused a hitch in Shirley's breath.

_Was_ she _all right?_ , he wondered, slightly groggy.

Suddenly  _both_  her hands became buried in his hair, her grip a little tight, and Lelouch jerked wide awake. Shirley leaned over, so her own long locks tickled his cheek. "Lelou."

"Yes!" Lelouch opened his eyes, and looked into her yellow-green, spring-leaf-colored ones. "What is it, Shirley."

For some reason, he swallowed – very, very hard.

"Can we talk a little about love?"

"Love?" His nerves returned to normal. Lelouch thought about Nunnally, but then decided Shirley's foray into the topic felt deceptively easy. Shirley must mean something else…. "I don't know much about it. Is there somebody you've realized you love?"

"Um." Shirley's knees shifted a little.

"If there is, then I want to meet him. You deserve someone—" A thought occurred to Lelouch, as his mind ticked further into full, conscious function. "Shirley! It's not Suzaku, is it?"

Lelouch sat up, rapidly, thinking. Shirley looked from her lap to his ruffled hair, stammering. Suzaku and Shirley often talked…. They sat next to each other at lunch and walked together and sometimes went for ice cream. Shirley had been the first person to introduce herself to Suzaku when Suzaku had first shown up to school. One time, Suzaku had even admitted that he and Shirley had spoken about Lelouch, thanks to something, and Shirley had fallen and landed on top of—

"He's impressive, Shirley, but he's the Knight of Seven. You deserve someone who can spend more time with you, who doesn't have the staunch mind of a soldier." He tried not to let his voice come out bitter.

Suzaku was cruel, and dull inside, and trying his hardest to get himself killed. If Shirley fell in love with someone like that, only to have her heart broken…. Lelouch would  _throttle_  Suzaku if Suzaku toyed with Shirley's emotions.

"You need somebody who can watch all your swim practices. Someone who can take you out shopping to malls, whenever you want, and buy you nice things. You need someone to hold your hand and make you smile. Suzaku is dense when it comes to affection. Unless he has ideas of the wrong sort, he's slow. Especially with women. There was a point I thought he had it right – but the way he shows devotion manifests itself more like blind loyalty than the kind of affection someone like you deserves. He can think deeply about relationships, but inside he's twisted; he only cares about the state of his own soul. He's especially twisted now, Shirley. Think of what he's seen. There's no way I'll allow a man like him to drag you down. Someone so rigid, and faking all that kindness, I—"

"Hey, Lelou."

"What? I wasn't done listing his shortcomings."

"You're hard on Suzaku, don't you think?"

Lelouch blinked again. No, he wasn't. At all.

Shirley laughed a shaky laugh. "You talk and you think about him a whole lot. He isn't a person I would love in that way, but I guess, if  _you_  have a person…?"

It took Lelouch a long instant to understand what Shirley was suggesting. Then, as the stars seemed to laugh down at him, he flushed, and turned away from Shirley's gaze.

Was Shirley suggesting Lelouch  _loved_  Suzaku? No, that was impossible. Just because Lelouch thought hard about him, often…. Besides, he wasn't jealous, believing Shirley might desire him. Wasn't jealousy a large part of loving? Lelouch's first thought had been for Shirley's wellbeing, not for what he'd do if there were competition over Suzaku; therefore, Lelouch did not love Suzaku.

There  _was_  no competition over Suzaku. All Lelouch had for Suzaku was desire – and a deeply warped desire, now, at that. If Suzaku were a good match for Shirley, and Shirley wanted him, then Lelouch would give his blessing and allow it. Lelouch didn't understand love outside of what he felt for Nunnally, but he did understand that people prioritized it. It was more important than attraction. And since Lelouch cared about Shirley so much, he would jump to give her love like that, if it was in his power. He'd taken so much else from her.

And Suzaku, too, was important to Lelouch – when it came to winning him over for the sake of proving his own innocence, at least. A happy Suzaku was a trusting Suzaku. And in fact, Shirley might be  _good_  for Suzaku… if Lelouch thought Suzaku would give a single good thing back. Lelouch thought they might be quite happy together, in a different time and place, and under different circumstances. Suzaku and Shirley. Shirley and Suzaku. Perhaps if Lelouch could make it work, his own problems regarding his complex emotions for Suzaku could be banished, erased.

Like Charles' Geass hadn't done. Like now Lelouch was almost certain he wished for.

Shirley blushed, as Lelouch stared at her and wondered how to answer.

Then a morbid thought occurred to him. Had Milly told Shirley about Lelouch's attraction?  _He makes me want to hurl him on a bed and tear his clothes off._  Oh, god…. What if Shirley had misinterpreted—? And now she thought  _Lelouch_  was competition for Suzaku?

Lelouch brought a hand up to his head.

"Is it that complicated?" Shirley smiled, almost sadly. "Just admit you like him, already."

"No, y-you've got it wrong," Lelouch said at once, his heart beginning to thump nonetheless. It was the way Shirley said  _like_. "I don't love anyone except—except Rolo. Love is dangerous, Shirley. It's a liability. Loves leads people to get hurt. If Suzaku is the person you wanted to talk about when you brought up love, I'm telling you, don't—"

"Sheesh," Shirley interrupted, sighing. She reached without warning across the space between them.

Lelouch fell instantly silent, as she returned those fingers to his hair, leaning forward on tucked knees to do it. It was a ruffle – a gentle one, but still enough to further upset his fine, black hair and leave it fluffed like raven feathers. Lelouch made a noise of surprise.

Shirley put on a mock frown. "'Suzaku, Suzaku.' He isn't my person. I wanted to talk about love generally. Do you know one thing I love, Lelou? Flopping into bed, after a night of fireworks."

"Hmn?"

It made Lelouch realize how deeply he was weary, despite that his mind forced itself awake, always. For half an instant, he wished to be back on Shirley's lap, but he shook it aside and tried to fix his hair.

They put away the fireworks. They tucked the boxes aside, and Shirley said she'd come for them tomorrow morning.

"It's nearly three. Sleep well, okay, Lelou?"

"Shirley—"

She gave him a small wave goodbye.

He watched her go down from the roof. Lelouch let the night wind toy more with his hair. He tried to weigh how much he'd give, in order to have C.C. now beside him. C.C. understood women, and relationships between women and men. She always told him when he was missing something, and at the moment Lelouch was positive he'd missed it. He missed C.C., too, with a sudden melancholy. Even if he had to buy her pizza….

C.C. was a woman Lelouch could unburden himself to. It'd taken them quite long to get to that point… but once they had, Lelouch had found it satisfying. After all, who best for a warlock but his witch?

Being with Shirley calmed Lelouch down, but when she left, only her words remained, and they caused in Lelouch a tiny jolt of pain. He remembered the place he had been just that morning, still in a state of upset and helplessness. Was it his – Zero's – fault that his life was complex, or would Shirley still throw his feelings into tangles, regardless of the power of Geass?

He went down to his bedroom in the clubhouse. When he took off his coat and opened the door, someone much more complicated, more burdened, and more emotional sat waiting for him.

For a long second, all Lelouch could think was,  _Thank god I cleaned up after returning from the seaside, because the evidence would have been all over me._  Then he thought,  _This means I've failed._

Here Suzaku waited, at three in the morning, fresh out of battle with Zero. The only reason he could possibly be present was because a switch had flipped again.

_It figures,_ Lelouch thought wearily.

Suzaku had gone back to suspecting him. Doubt had crept again into the circuits of his mind, like rats scurrying through subway tunnels despite men having tried to drive them out. Lelouch considered that perhaps, Suzaku's loathing and suspicion were and had always been pieces of nature no man could exterminate. Lelouch's own fault, relying on hubris, underestimating this.

The uniform of the Rounds glimmered, white and gold and breathtaking; Suzaku had left the cape somewhere behind. The gloves were still on. And his shining boots, too. Lelouch decided his best option was to remain casual, as he didn't know what  _level_  of suspicious Suzaku lurked in that grand uniform. Was Suzaku's suspicion mild – mere paranoia – or completely adamant again? What amount of hate flashed alongside that gold cording? All this back-and-forth uncertainty about Lelouch's memories…. It might have made Suzaku unstable.

"Why don't you take off some of your things and stay?" As he said it, Lelouch felt a little nauseated.  _Please tell me Shirley doesn't honestly love you_.  _I won't let you hurt her the way you do me._ Whatever Suzaku felt, it wasn't likely to be much. Lately, Suzaku was a cold, heartless bastard. To randomly sneak up, like this…. Lelouch added, "You could have called first. Why didn't you?"

"Where were you?" Suzaku countered. "Why aren't you on the school trip?"

Adamant suspicions, then. Once again. Lovely.

"Where were  _you_ , to come in that outfit, in the middle of the night? I had to take Rolo to the hospital, and then pick him up again after. You can ask the others who skipped the trip with me, and stop giving me that face, workaholic.  _You're_  not on the school trip, either, I'll point out – and I'm sure it's not because you'd rather be with us at Ashford." He wondered what he'd done this time, to toss Suzaku back to a realm where  _'trust'_  was an idea gone stale.

"I went out on Rounds duty."

"Aha. I see. I understand. Battle explosions you can hurl yourself into are far more thrilling than leftover fireworks."

Suzaku had settled into the couch that sat on one side of Lelouch's bedroom – with his feet under the coffee table Lelouch often spread his laptop on. He hadn't turned on any lights, but the window was open; he sat bathed in silver moonlight, glimmering. He didn't grace Lelouch's jabs with any real response.

Instead, Suzaku said, "Zero has agreed to the new viceroy's proposal to begin another Special Administrative Zone."

Lelouch found a stray hanger and hung up his jacket, deciding not to turn on any real lights. It would be hard to come up with details for his alibi, despite that he had Shirley to help with part of it. An aid in hiding his anxiety would be a welcome shield to fight with….

He stayed in the shadows and let the dark play with his features. "Oh?" he said. "The viceroy wants to piggyback on Princess Euphemia's idea? As Euphemia's old knight, you must be thrilled – or are you? Although I suppose... even if you lose this viceroy to a repeat bloody incident, at least you aren't attached to her."

Lelouch removed his shoes with a flick of his wrist. Suzaku sat there and said nothing.

"Is that girl really as helpless as her image would suggest? I couldn't watch her whole speech. I got disgusted, thinking how underhanded our government is. After all the emperor's talk about strength, she gets on the screen and says she's weak and asks for help? I bet she's being used. A girl like that can only spiral downward."

"Lelouch." Suzaku cut his lying short.

Suzaku didn't appear to be breathing. His hands were clasped before him, on his lap. Lelouch did not know how to read his expression.

"What is it, Suzaku? Is anything wrong?"

"Should I believe what Zero says?"

Lelouch unlocked his wardrobe, and haltingly hung up his jacket inside it. The question disconcerted him. He thought carefully about how an innocent version of himself ought to respond.

"About agreeing to join the S.A.Z.? No, Suzaku. I wouldn't trust him."

He delivered it casually-but-thoughtfully, as if he had truly considered the question. But honestly… what other answer could Lelouch give, without appearing as if he were Zero?

Suzaku showed no change in posture. Lelouch told himself he may have to get used to the idea of never knowing what Suzaku felt inside again – unless it was lust, in their twisted involvement.

Then Suzaku did a peculiar thing. He leaned over, with his elbows on his knees, and buried one gloved hand in his hair. Suzaku repeated, "You wouldn't trust him."

Lelouch said, "How could I, if I were you?"

It stopped all talk for a long, painful second.

Lelouch would have given anything to know what was running through Suzaku's mind. How had Suzaku read into the question, if Suzaku had done so at all? Did he think Lelouch simply a master at manipulating people, in that Lelouch made like he empathized with them? Or had Lelouch's question caused Suzaku to wonder whether Lelouch as Zero were acknowledging his hatred? Expressing that he understood it?

Lelouch did understand it. He knew  _exactly_ why Suzaku hated him, and what Suzaku thought Lelouch had done wrong. Lelouch had no problem viewing from other people's perspectives. That didn't mean Lelouch agreed with Suzaku's perspective, or that he felt sorry for anything he'd done. However, even Zero, deep down, was a human. He comprehended other people's feelings. Even Suzaku's.

The subliminal layers of meaning only held Suzaku down for a moment. Suzaku breathed again, deep, like a diver… and the hand not in his hair fished his pocket, coming up dangling something that caught the moonlight.

Lelouch froze.

Suzaku said, sharply, "Tell me about trust."

Lelouch thought, for half a red-tinged instant,  _How I wish I hadn't made you live_.

"You snuck through my personal things?" he replied. His voice came out raspy and hoarse. Homicidal.

Suzaku held a needle gun full of Refrain.

The look splashing Suzaku's face said he abhorred having discovered such an item. It said he was disgusted, beyond any level of disgust he could have previously predicted – because he thought Lelouch's possession of the Refrain stupid, pathetic, and deeply repellent. "It's yours, then? You don't deny it?" His mouth made a downward twist like he'd vomit.

Lelouch said, "Before you jump to conclusions, I wasn't planning to take it." Or at least… he hadn't planned to take that specific, particular dose.

Suzaku stared. It made Lelouch feel polluted, like he were less than spit-out gum on Suzaku's finest shoe soles. Lelouch realized it would have been better to say nothing, but to let himself be gazed upon like that… with pity, aversion, mistrust….

Suzaku put the needle gun down on the table. Lelouch loosened the collar of his dark green turtleneck.

The truth was, although Kallen had broken the first vial – the one Lelouch had confiscated from the gang members he'd made squatting fools of – he'd wanted to keep a second dose of Refrain handy. He didn't plan to take it… but one never really  _planned_  to start taking drugs, did they.

It hadn't been hard to procure more. Sickeningly simple to, in fact. It wasn't at all that Lelouch  _wanted_  to take it. He just couldn't help but think – especially now that Nunnally had turned away from Zero – that he hadn't yet hit the darkest moment of his life. Worse than death might wait for Lelouch still, and if that ever happened…. Lelouch wanted to have a last resort.

Lelouch was afraid of death. Unlike Suzaku, if Lelouch ever grew desperate, he couldn't work up the courage to put himself somewhere he'd get conveniently slaughtered. As for the direct route, like slitting his wrists? Putting a hole in his brain with a bullet? Even less possible that he could do it. Perhaps it had to do with pride. Or optimism, ruthless human hope, or survival instinct. Lelouch would cling to sparks of life. But… life could become hell to live. If it did – if he ever hit rock bottom – Lelouch intended to allow himself this one, pathetic, cowardly move.

He'd give himself Refrain. He would remember grand old times. That way, at least, if the drug broke him down like Kallen's mother, and ruined his body… he'd die without even knowing it happened. He'd die smiling, thinking about his little sisters, Nunnally and Euphy, surrounded by roses in a white-washed palace. He'd physically remove himself from everyone else first, so he couldn't do a selfish, reckless thing like demanding of Kallen again,  _Comfort me_. He would simply waste away, by himself, the way he ought to.

Lelouch had to be prepared for anything. He had to be prepared to accept his fate alone, without taking anyone else to his grave.

But Lelouch couldn't say all that now, to Suzaku. Suzaku left the Refrain sitting there ominously, as if at any second he'd pick it up and smash it, just like Kallen…. And, like Kallen, Suzaku was repulsed. Lelouch wondered if next Suzaku would harangue him.

If he did, surely the speech he gave Lelouch would not be one that boiled down to,  _Pull yourself together._

What move was Suzaku planning now? What did Lelouch's possession of Refrain signify, in Suzaku's head?

The silence played out. Lelouch, his heart pounding, tried to break down the information from Suzaku's perspective again – the perspective that had discovery of Lelouch's guilt as the primary mission.

Suzaku thought that somehow, a guilty or an innocent schoolboy Lelouch had come by some Refrain? Decided to try it, for whatever reason? And now Suzaku was… what? Worried about how it related to Zero? Worried only over Lelouch's health? Perhaps Suzaku believed Lelouch would take Refrain because Lelouch had spoken to him of depression. Whatever the reason, Suzaku obviously couldn't set aside the possibility that the stuff had touched Lelouch's veins, and possibly even brought wisps of Zero back, marking Lelouch as guilty without doubt.

Lelouch looked at the vial, sweating. Suzaku's wild conclusions and suspicions weren't so wild. What  _would_  taking Refrain do, to someone who'd been given a false set of memories? Could the Refrain counteract the Geass? No one knew. Would Refrain only confuse the abuser? The abuser might see hints of  _real_  past – true memories brought to life by the drug – but that past would clash with the implanted one. The subject might go insane… or realize that one set of memories couldn't be trusted.

Yes. If that person were smart, were Lelouch… they might be able to figure out what information didn't match. And sort out the reality. And start to piece a life together. It wasn't a wonder to find that Suzaku looked like a lone buoy tossed about by waves. For the first time, Suzaku might have come across true evidence. Lelouch didn't know what Suzaku intended to do – or say – if he thought he possessed it. If Suzaku tried to arrest Lelouch, Lelouch had no way of putting up a fight. Not this tired, not while this disadvantaged.

His heart pounded. "Suzaku."

Suzaku said nothing.

Something else occurred to Lelouch, watching Suzaku digest the possibilities.

Had Suzaku clung to a hope-shred until now? Had finding this Refrain been some sort of blow? The utter deadness Suzaku embodied, on the couch…. Suzaku looked like his spirit was soggy. If Refrain could indeed awaken Zero, then all traces of Lelouch Lamperouge were gone – with no way at all for Suzaku to know how long it'd been that way, or how to contain it. Enough to drive a person mad, discoveries like that. It was one thing to tell oneself, 'There's no hope; I shouldn't believe in his innocence any more; this is stupid,' and another to have such statements clearly proven without warning. Suzaku might feel he'd been slapped in the face, with a reality he'd hoped would never have to come to pass. Suzaku might delude himself, trick himself, and deny it all just fine in his own head, but once presented with concrete evidence, he'd have no way to escape the pain of knowing. Knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt Lelouch was Zero.

Imagine having to cycle back, through everything already done, but look with different eyes and grow horrified at the way things had been twisted….

The same kind of torture had been forced on Lelouch. Lelouch remembered raking back his hair in rage, clicking backward through those pictures with Rolo. Lelouch wanted right now to snarl,  _See how it feels?_

He choked down hate in favor of his fascination.

What if Suzaku had  _wanted_  to believe in Lelouch Lamperouge, despite knowing from the start that Lelouch Lamperouge had probably long disappeared? It would be very nearly flattering, to find Suzaku bothered so by proof at last – and despite that he'd treated Lelouch as truly guilty from the start. However….

"Suzaku," he said again.

He desperately needed to do something. What? Allow Suzaku to think he'd indeed taken the Refrain, but had not gotten any real memories back? It'd be hard to convince anybody of that. Plus, Lelouch would be tarnishing his reputation. He couldn't bear the thought of anyone believing he would possess Refrain while he was just a normal, Britannian student. So…. Should he deny again that he had used it? It was the truth, but Suzaku might not believe it.

"I didn't take any Refrain," Lelouch said.

_Please,_ he thought,  _let me convince you. After all, despite your betrayal, you are at least protecting Nunnally. Nunnally_ chose _you, over me. And Shirley now might even want you! I can't afford to let the mire between us knock you off the deep end._

He knelt before Suzaku on the couch, in the space next to Suzaku's legs, beside the coffee table. He said, "Suzaku. Look at me." He didn't add it outright, but his tone implied an added,  _Please._

Slowly, Suzaku raised his eyes.

"I didn't take it."

Absolutely nothing from Suzaku but a stare.

Lelouch swallowed carefully. "Do you believe me?"

"Will anything change, if I do or I don't?"

Lelouch watched Suzaku's mouth hold its grim line. "If we're playing a questions game, then I'll ask – why is your glass half-empty all the time?"

Suzaku dropped his gaze away.

Lelouch had offered only a statement of truth, no real explanation. Nothing could be solved, and Lelouch as Zero knew it – even if Suzaku believe that he didn't. Just because Lelouch had not taken Refrain didn't mean Lelouch could not still be Zero. There might be other ways to regain memories. All Lelouch's words had achieved were that both of them bounced back to square one. Uncertainty.

No, nothing would change, whether or not Suzaku chose to believe him.

"Lelouch?"

"Yes."

Lelouch wanted to go to sleep, not wade knee-deep through this fiasco. He wanted to shake Suzaku, before kicking him out – and say,  _Don't make that face. You have no right to judge me. I know it's Refrain, and it's bad, but I still—_

"The other night, Lelouch," Suzaku said.

The other night? Lelouch's 'fantastic' blow job.

Lelouch flushed. He started to feel warm. What had Suzaku felt that night, after walking away? Lelouch hadn't yet had time to wonder, but it seemed a pointless chore to now. Whatever spell Lelouch cast had worn off…. Was Suzaku furious with himself, for giving in to passion? Did he hate Lelouch now more than ever? Was his appetite fired, or quenched now completely?

…Had his cries of lust been faked, or had Suzaku actually liked it?

Lelouch said, immediately, "I enjoyed it."

Suzaku looked in Lelouch's eyes. Then he stood, with a sharpness that said he was prepared to test the sincerity of the statement. He uttered, "If you didn't, you accomplished nothing but your own degradation."

Lelouch stiffened, feeling a strong, black need to assert his control. "Doing that to you was far from degrading, Suzaku."

"I see. Empowering?" Suzaku suggested. "Almost like you had the power of a king?"

Lelouch snorted and spoke with little interest. "More like the lust of Pornography Gods."

But the had air shifted; too late Lelouch understood through his distracted haze the additional meanings behind Suzaku's question.  _Will anything change, if I do or don't believe you?_

Suzaku had applied the query to attraction.

Lelouch tried not to fidget, still on his knees on the floor. Was Suzaku purposely inquiring into the status of their sexual relationship, in order to find out whether they ought to continue it? Was he asking Lelouch – whom he believed might be Zero at this very moment – whether  _being Zero_ and having Zero's memories affected their intimate interactions? Was Suzaku trying to gauge whether Lelouch would put betrayal aside for desire? Suzaku had found – and now was seeking to explore – their loophole.

One of Suzaku's gloves fell to the floor. Then the other. Lelouch twitched his hands very slightly.

Suzaku unclasped his tailcoat next. He said, "You know… you ended up with an obvious erection."

Lelouch leaned back on his hands. If this went on, Suzaku might continue to peel back the layers they hid behind, until their game became almost transparent. It'd be like walking over landmines, praying they wouldn't blow.  _Better_  to pretend, Lelouch truly believed. Better to keep up a thicker façade, as difficult as it often proved.  _Damn_  it.

Or maybe it was that right now, Lelouch couldn't handle a higher level of risk. Not running on countless hours without sleep.

S-Suzaku, in his mouth and hard. Full and slick. Electrifying. Suzaku had made Lelouch think of it, and now the image battered at the forefront of his mind.

Lelouch said, "Yes, I ended up with one." An erection. Why deny it? Let Suzaku cut to the chase.

"You want this."

It didn't come out like a question. Lelouch thought it should have, or seemed like it'd been meant to. His thoughts got jumbled by the  _piff_  of fine fabric, as Suzaku's tailcoat crumpled on the couch. Suzaku took his tall boots off next.

Socked feet, and fitted white slacks. A black turtleneck that hugged every muscle. Wild, soft hair. Lelouch instantly wanted—

"Yes _,_ I want this," he said, exasperated.

He wasn't sure if he spoke lies or the truth. But for the sake of protecting his identity as Zero, Lelouch had to pretend he spoke truth, and with ardor. It struck him that doing so may yet backfire, because Suzaku appeared to be manipulating something in his own right, except, at that moment, Lelouch couldn't figure—

Suzaku bent down. Gripped his chin. "How do you want it?"

Lelouch thought the grip a bit savage. "Excuse me?"

Suzaku left Lelouch on the floor, walking the length of the coffee table as if the motion would ease something inside him. "You want it," Suzaku told him, "and I haven't given it to you. I need to make up for that." Lelouch opened his mouth, but Suzaku held up a hand. "It's what you've been suggesting. Even though this isn't a relationship, you…" Suzaku paused on the words.

Suzaku paused, and he stiffened, as if prepping for conflict. But not the kind of conflict he was used to from Lelouch. This came from somewhere inside himself.

"You have needs," Suzaku said. "And I'm the person you still want to meet them. Still, even after going through all of this." He turned, and met Lelouch's gaze, slight disgust tinting his features again. "Is that true? Is my read of the situation wrong?"

Lelouch felt figuratively as well as physically floored. His heartbeat grew irregular and the taste in his mouth became bad-milk sour.

He thought of playing it off the way he should.  _You're too hard on yourself. I've gotten over it, Suzaku. 'Going through?' 'All this?' All you did was leave for work. It isn't like you split apart a pair of siblings, or clapped an innocent man into irons…._

Instead, Lelouch held direct eye contact and answered every item that Suzaku had posed with blazing truth. "I do, Suzaku, and  _yes_. You. Yes. It's true, and no – it isn't wrong."

Yes. Forever, simply yes. If this were regarding his desire only,  _yes._

"So then, I'm asking," Suzaku said, hushed. His voice scratched a little, like chalk on black pavement. "How do you want it? What do you like in the bedroom?"

Lelouch made a sound like a gate hinging open.

There had once been a time when Suzaku didn't need to ask what Lelouch wanted. They would just explore and use instinct, keeping their minds ever open to discovery. Anything  _but_  such trust and teamwork seemed twisted. Lelouch glossed over that fact, however – too stunned by the reality that was current suggestion. Suzaku was asking Lelouch  _what he wanted_. Suzaku intended to—?

Suzaku took something else out of his pocket. "This?" he asked softly. He flashed the small object.

Lelouch forgot that people needed air.

Something else found, in a place Lelouch kept private. Something else Suzaku should have never planted hands on. It woke Lelouch up from his stupor completely.

Lelouch glanced around his room, rigidly, noting miniscule details he should have seen at once were out of place. But no – he'd been distracted by Suzaku's blatant presence. Suzaku had searched the  _entire room_ , probably to the floorboards, while Lelouch had been with Milly and Shirley – not just the desk where Lelouch had stashed the supply of Refrain.

Lelouch clenched his jaw, his anger as unquantifiable and vast then as the universe. Suzaku's training to search rooms was good, Lelouch saw, but it didn't match his, and so Lelouch could weigh the damage right there, just by casually looking. Suzaku had broken nothing, misplaced nothing, but still – such frightful gall incensed Lelouch. Forget sex, he wanted blood. Lelouch didn't keep his Zero suit here, or anything incriminating anymore since Ashford had become his cage, and Suzaku hadn't found anything  _too_  suspicious that Lelouch couldn't make excuses for… but there were still things people shouldn't find. Like his Refrain, his way out.

And flavored lubricant.

Suzaku began to read the label. "Vanilla-Licorice Silky Soft—"

"Stop!" Lelouch cried, fumbling at last to stand. "I had that from before, when we were still—!" He abruptly closed his mouth.

Suzaku said, "When we were still…?"

Lelouch felt blood quickly draining from his face. He hadn't said anything blatant at all, but still Suzaku looked like he'd unearthed a pot of gold. Cursed gold. Triumphant, but almost as if he choked, and contemplated slowly tearing out both their intestines – inch by inch, to avoid what might come next.

Lelouch scrabbled like the sword of Damocles hung up over his head. "Before," he rasped, "when we were almost dating. Before you left, that's all I mean," he stressed, trying desperately to make it sound like no deeper connotations colored it.  _Before, when we were closer, because you hadn't sold me out to join the Rounds._

"Lelouch." Quite sharp, yet somehow sounding smothered.

_He knows. He_ knows _. My entire cover is—_

Suzaku was walking toward him, looking serious and seriously stunning. Lelouch dropped the arms he'd used to gesture and stood. Was this how easy it was to lose? Thanks to bone-deep exhaustion, and a pre-emptive move the old Lelouch had made in order to secure lubricant, because C.C. had told him he might one day want to have it….

"Stop," Lelouch uttered, although Suzaku hadn't done a thing. "Learn not to touch what doesn't belong to you. I like you, of course, but I didn't invite you here for anything like this. Even  _you_  can't just walk into my bedroom, and go through all my things—"

"Do you want me, Lelouch?" Suzaku interjected. "Do you want me anymore, or not? Cast everything aside and answer. Everything." His gaze was a verdurous swirl of insistence. Suzaku pulled his shirt off then, stretching the tight fabric over his chest, revealing smooth, embossed abdominals and hips that jutted out above that low-slung waistline.

"You—!" Lelouch broke, a bottle dropped on tile. "Suzaku!" His voice was a sheet of sandpaper. His head and his heart tried to rupture too, strained. Lelouch said next, losing and shattering,  _"Yes."_

Suzaku appeared to nod once to himself. Then, without warning, he wrapped fingers in Lelouch's hair and hauled him forward, pressing their lips together fervently.

A spectacular jolt of desire went dipping from their connected lips straight to Lelouch's groin. Lelouch fought, for the first heady seconds. Then he grabbed Suzaku close.

Suzaku tucked his hand further into Lelouch's hair and tugged, to get Lelouch to tilt his head – while his free hand pulled Lelouch flush against his thigh and caused a second of splendid, brutal friction. The kiss became deeper, and Lelouch parted his lips in breathless passion. He groaned, clutching Suzaku by the belt-loops, but then Suzaku peeled them apart.

"Are you telling the truth, Lelouch?"

"N-no. Yes. What truth? What use is the truth?" His mind was gone, in helpless spirals.

Truth was different for everyone. Reality boasted multiple facets and perspectives. People needed to lie, sometimes, to  _show_  the truth, and to protect those who they cared about….

Suzaku frowned, and grabbed Lelouch again. He began kissing short, rough kisses down Lelouch's neck, stretching the green shirt well out of the way. Lelouch melted like fondue; he couldn't stop it. He caught Suzaku around the shoulders with both arms. Pressed up against Suzaku's smooth, bare torso. Melded their lips in a more violent kiss.

Suzaku held his waist too tight. Lelouch bit Suzaku's lower lip, but Suzaku didn't even flinch. Instead, he waited until they came up for air, and then forced Lelouch backward – onto the bed.

The bed boasted neat layers of blankets and folds. They tossed the lot into waves, like the sea.

They breathlessly fumbled and fought for control, among sheets Lelouch had just wanted to sleep in. Lelouch kissed – raggedly – every inch of skin on Suzaku that he could reach, resorting to teeth when Suzaku tried to deny him. Suzaku found Lelouch's wrists and pinned them up above his head, having none of Lelouch's impatience, refusing Lelouch any chance at control. He released Lelouch only after running a thumb across the conspicuously pebbled nipple near to his reach – using hard, commanding pressure that elicited a writhing buck – so Lelouch could undress and Suzaku could do it again, and again, without fabric to dull the sensation. Pulling off Lelouch's jacket and turtleneck became a trembling partner effort, as Lelouch moaned and said, " _Satisfy_ me tonight, Suzaku."

Suzaku glanced at him. At the planes of Lelouch's body he had rarely seen, porcelain white in the moon and exposed. Was he rapt or unimpressed? "Is that really what you want?"

"Suzaku, you're beautiful. Just—" How many times did Lelouch need to say it?

"I'll make you come, then. Impossibly hard."

Lelouch arched his back and let out a whine – derisively, intimidated, but underneath, sharply wanton and ready. He'd been hard since Suzaku knocked him flat. His hips strained for Suzaku's hands.

Suzaku flipped him over and Lelouch's pants slid down. They hit the floor, tangling up in their other discarded garments. Suzaku spent a long instant, gazing with a carefully blank face at the erection he could measure only now. Lelouch couldn't tell if he had an opinion; if Suzaku flushed, if he swallowed, or heated… Lelouch had no clue, and it half drove him crazy.

Suzaku kept his white pants on.

He moved around, behind Lelouch, so Lelouch couldn't see him at all now from his face-plant on the mattress. Lelouch didn't care that he lied much too prone. His whole body felt so tense, hard, aching…. His longing had slicked the tip of his erection. Every breath he took reminded him of his desire, the way it throbbed like heartbeats – because Suzaku had started this, this time. Suzaku had started to touch him. He actively took part – at last – in bringing about Lelouch's pleasure.

Lelouch felt relief in submitting to it, allowing Suzaku to strip him and steer him around. Lelouch had bided enough time, waiting to be prioritized this way. He almost laughed; Suzaku  _owed_  this to him – for all the times they'd never been allowed to couple sooner. Always the army, Suzaku's homework, interruptions. His hatred for Zero. His endless suspicion.

"What do you want?" Suzaku asked him.

"Do—," Lelouch choked on his response. "Do as you see fit. But do  _something_."

"You'd give me complete control?"

He didn't know why, but Lelouch wanted to give up at that question, or just keep going, but cry. Somehow pretend that this mess wouldn't happen.

Control of his desire. Suzaku had  _always_  had it.

Suzaku hesitated. Then he was moving. Rough in his motions. "I don't believe you."

Lelouch heard the pop of a cap coming loose. The squirt of what could only be the item Suzaku found. Then, while Lelouch fought not to groan into the silence, Suzaku's non-slicked hand came up, to trace the curves where Lelouch's haunches met the tops of his thighs in back. The hand settled on Lelouch's left hip from behind, anchoring him in place. Other fingers, after that, went skimming around Lelouch's entrance.

Lelouch's body tensed almost to breaking. He trembled head to toe, thinking of what would happen if he let it. Did he want this, truly? Yes. He  _did_  – and Suzaku very lightly pressed, turning Lelouch's tremble to a shiver, in which Lelouch understood without a doubt that he would certainly have killed for this. That perhaps, all along, this was what he  _had_  been killing for. This kind of holy-yet-unholy union – for it represented how humans, when allowed real freedom, would use it to do world-shifting, great things… despite that it meant they had more room to make mistakes. Would Lelouch learn from this soul-changing mistake, later, when he was a mess swathed in sweat, come, and emotion? Did it matter any more?

Suzaku, still seeking and now rubbing deftly, denied Lelouch any stronger satisfaction.

Lelouch leaned back into Suzaku's touch, but Suzaku moved away from him. He still hovered, waiting, and soon enough, again he began pressing, searching, tempting… but nothing more. Lelouch grit his teeth, choking on his desire.

"Su… _Suzaku_."

"You haven't done this."

"Put it  _in_. It doesn't matter. I won't wait."

"It'll hurt."

"Suzaku, I don't care!"

The yell shocked them both into reflective silence, and banished concern over what might be awkward.

_It's true_ , Lelouch realized, numbly. He really didn't care about the looming risk of pain. In fact, if it hurt, all the better to please him. It was accurate depiction of the damage they were doing.

Suzaku – Lelouch's bitter poison. The poison he'd craved from the very beginning. To punish him for all his wrongs, to pleasure him, to remind him what he'd lost.

Their shared past was gone, because Lelouch had acted in a way that had destroyed it for them both. But he needed to remember, still. Needed to be forced to confront what had gone – in the image of Suzaku Kururugi, every day. Otherwise, Lelouch might lose track of his motivation for building something better and new. It only made sense, didn't it, for Lelouch to desire to drown whole like this – swarmed by the pain of everything he'd lost… and the pleasurable illusion that he might have it back, if only for the briefest of times. It fueled his determination. Kept him going.

More importantly, in the grip of the high, Lelouch felt nothing but ecstasy. Rapture.

Suzaku's hands on his hips and his waist. Suzaku's green eyes, and mussed hair, and raw power. Something glinted in the moonlight from the table.

Lelouch finally recognized the better crutch. The better poison. He'd found better release.

Suzaku did nothing for one long instant. Then he did, squeezing inside Lelouch slickly.

"Ahh-!" It  _did_  begin to hurt, but the intrusion was wanted. Lelouch finally understood it.

He pressed into Suzaku's thrust and groaned; Suzaku's lissome finger pushed past rings of clenching muscle.

"Lelouch, this…. Why are you letting me do this?" The hint of the first real concern in his voice.

Good, so good. Suzaku, inside. Didn't Suzaku understand how it felt? Suzaku pressed his finger deeper, as if he forgot briefly what he was doing. Lelouch choked his reply. "Don't stop. Go to the hilt, yes; I don't intend to explain it or stop you."

He bit the sheets, where they were crumpled in his hands. The room began tilting. That pressing sensation… it dragged across one focused spot, and Lelouch lost all track of his reason.

"Aah!"

He closed his eyes when Suzaku pulled out. Slid in again. And out. And in. A floating and dipping sensation stemmed from somewhere in Lelouch's gut, or in his chest. He wasn't sure, but he let it consume him. It turned him, in a dizzy heat.

"Ah,  _ah_ , S…Suza—aah!"

Mad. He would go mad with this. Nothing had a right to be so simple, rough, and perfect, inducing weakness everywhere. His core was a cage of fast butterfly flutters. Lelouch began panting, now. In and out. In.

"Nngh…." He scrabbled at the sheets. The too-slow pace was bound to make him cry for more. He'd  _die_  of this, if Suzaku refused him more. Suzaku kept up the languid rhythm.

Ever-so-torturously pleasing him. Suzaku said, as Lelouch abused the sheets something brutal, in a moment where thought was as lost as sunken trade ships, "Do you love me? You're falling apart."

The words cut through Lelouch's pleasure and cracked, like Suzaku snapped a whip somewhere above him. The phrase echoed.  _Love me. Do you love me?_ The bed suddenly failed to seem stable. His whole center rocked, off-balance. Stupid question.

Mustering everything he had, Lelouch turned his head to assess his dominator, feeling a drop of sweat slip down his temple. "Wh-what?"

"Do you love me, Lelouch?"

Expressionless. Eyes like the grave. Lelouch wet his lips, helplessly dizzy.

He thought of the first conversation they'd had. He thought about Shirley's words on the roof. He thought of Nunnally. His mother. His pleasure-softened brain pedaled through cycles, hunting meaning.

He said, "No, Suzaku. I don't love you." He repeated the words, fiercely.

It was partly the truth, for Suzaku had betrayed him, yet partly a lie, because Lelouch still felt  _something_. What word was there, to capture his attraction? To describe intimacy this dark, this bittersweet? It couldn't be 'love.' It simply couldn't.

It was the same answer Lelouch had given Suzaku back then. What could he do, besides just give it? Lelouch refused to love Suzaku, for all the reasons he'd already given to Suzaku and to Shirley.

Additionally, love needed great trust. Blind, powerful trust. There were some things Lelouch trusted Suzaku to do, but not everything. Not nearly enough. He trusted Suzaku like a friend—No, like a predictable enemy, now. That was all. And nothing more.

Suzaku began, "Are you telling the—"

"—truth? I am." Or Lelouch would at least swear he was.

To  _love_  Suzaku, and still do this…? That would just be tragedy. Lelouch preferred more optimism. He said, "But Suzaku, surely this proves I want you? Don't tell me, at a time like this, that you're still having doubts—?" Suzaku had stopped moving his fingers. Lelouch groaned.

"I'm not." Suzaku frowned, and that was all. He used Lelouch's phrase next, murmuring low, "I'm- I'm flattered."

For once, Lelouch didn't dwell on Suzaku's reactions. Suzaku seemed to hold back, then redouble his efforts. He hit that perfect spot, deliciously, returning to his task with concentration.

Lelouch moaned. Suzaku's attentions wouldn't be enough, soon, if he kept up a pace like this. Lelouch wanted more fingers. More speed. Faster, harder.

"Does it feel good?" Suzaku's voice stayed calm, a contrast to Lelouch's mewling well of wild noises.

"Suzaku, a little more. I need—"

Suzaku crooked his finger without warning. Lelouch couldn't regain control of his breath, tensing under the effect the action had. Suzaku became rougher, the inward thrusts dragging over his insides and wreaking sweetest havoc on small bundles of nerve endings…. Suzaku stole Lelouch's wrists in his free hand and secured them both behind Lelouch's back, forcing Lelouch's chest, shoulders, and head farther into the mattress.

"Suzaku," Lelouch choked out, and he resented Suzaku suddenly, for this humiliating position. "Why don't you just go inside? Forget using your fingers. If I'm falling apart, I'm sure you too…." But that was when Lelouch understood something.

Why Suzaku hadn't taken off his pants, or even loosened them. Why Suzaku had moved behind, so Lelouch had to strain just to make out his features.

Gods in hell. No. How could Lelouch let him—

Suzaku let go of Lelouch's arms. Still pumping in back, he moved his free hand to the front, where Lelouch's need burned with heat close to fire. Before Lelouch could fight, protest, or flee, Suzaku's rough, warm grip closed firmly on him – and began sliding, making waves of wracking pleasure. Suzaku slipped another wet finger inside, to join the first, and moved both hands in time. Relentless. Relentless and ruthless. Everything Lelouch suddenly feared to feel, because—

Lelouch let out a storm of pleas. They mushroomed, they snowballed, they became so many chants, unleashed for many things as he gasped into the crumpled sheets and saw colors. He realized a great lot of his hoarse words were in his head; he couldn't speak; he struggled just to take in air.  _No, stop. Wait. This isn't right, but—yes, like that. Yes, nngh, right there! H-harder. In, yes, in again, in, in…. Suzaku—how can you—aahn! But this, I-I'm coming…._ He forgot to care that tears were forming in his squeezed-shut eyes. He told Suzaku to make him rock, to make him beg, to make him forget pain. He cried out when Suzaku twitched his wrist, so expertly that Lelouch felt his stiff erection shudder – the way his body shuddered at those expert little motions.

Suzaku, holding him, possessing him,  _inside_  him… and all while Suzaku calmly used their damned loophole.

Feeling nothing himself. Feeling empty, Suzaku did this.

_You're heartless_. Lelouch wanted to laugh.  _I knew you were poison, but I didn't expect_ this _. I could never, ever love you like this…._

Lelouch bit his lip and did not plan to shout, but he did, and richly, when Suzaku leaned over. Suzaku delivered, husky in his ear, "Come, Lelouch. Hard now, all over my hand. Let me see you come undone. You're beautiful, too. You'll make me lose control..." The flat of his chest pressed against Lelouch's back.

Liar. A liar. But Lelouch obeyed him. He couldn't help it; Suzaku's voice unsheathed him, so he showed his passion sharply.

Lelouch came, in a burst, into Suzaku's firm hand. His whole body shook like his bones would collapse. Suzaku pumped him until he was limp, holding him up when his own arms gave out, catching him around the waist when it seemed dizziness would black him out – even as he still was spilling pearls of perfect pleasure.

When it was over, he dropped onto the violated sheets. With a supreme effort, Lelouch rolled himself over.

Suzaku licked a sticky finger, eyeing Lelouch impassively. The site of Suzaku's tongue lapping up Lelouch's— h-his—! Was Suzaku truly satisfied? Wrong damned kind of satisfaction. Wrong damned kind of triumph. Lelouch shivered. He'd fallen fast into a trap. This had all been one big test.

Lelouch couldn't even tell whether he'd passed or failed.

His thoughts became fire.  _You criminal, you liar. You damned conniving, heartless bastard. I want that all over again. I want you_ dead _._

Lelouch said, "All right, I'm impressed. And now, you?"

Suzaku's eyes betrayed nothing. "No need," he exclaimed.

"I appreciate your gallantry, Suzaku. However, I think that you're not being fair." Lelouch refused to give Suzaku the final say. Suzaku had  _pretended._  He'd held back his own lust, exploiting Lelouch's instead, and he hadn't felt guilty about it. Even when Lelouch had been exploiting Suzaku, he'd had the decency to admit that their acts were a turn on. Lelouch had never blocked that out. If nothing else, Suzaku was still gorgeous. If nothing else, they both were very open to the art of gay relations. To deny even  _that_  seemed an insult, unfair, and Lelouch did not intend to let Suzaku get away with it. What should he do? Get Suzaku hard again? Swallow him down another time, mere hours after facing him again as Zero?

It would take effort. My god... could he manage?

Lelouch stared at the ceiling a moment, blinking, drifting. Letting his heart rate slow back down to normal, and his waves of pleasure recede back to sea. A possibility occurred to him. What if…. What if the attraction on Suzaku's part  _had_ been erased by suspicion, completely, and this act, at last, had been the blatant proof of it? Lelouch's heart found energy to twinge.

What a phenomenal adversary Lelouch had in Suzaku. Truly the worst and the best kind of poison.

Suzaku leaned back, so that his cheekbones caught the moonlight. He said, in his old, light voice, "It's okay, Lelouch. There isn't a need to worry about my half. Just seeing you satisfied is enough. Really."

Lelouch absolutely refused to allow this. The upper hand, gone again. "Suzaku—" he started.

"I love you." Suzaku whispered it in his ear.

Lelouch propped himself on his elbows, moving so fast that Suzaku backed up. Then Suzaku laughed, quietly. Lelouch wished and wished that he'd simply heard wrong.

He hadn't. A storm cloud seemed to loom behind Suzaku's smiling face, as poison became stronger with the simple, three-word statement.

Lelouch trembled. Yet such a lie!  _I'll find a way to make you suffer, kill you…._

But... if it wasn't a lie? There was the rub. Killing Lelouch, slowly. Masterful toxin. Lelouch would do nothing to fight back if it were true, because he  _needed_  this twisted, dark intimacy. Now Suzaku knew it. And Suzaku would use it. But use it for what? To control? To prove guilty? Did reasons matter anymore? Lelouch considered giving up for good. Confessing. He felt tired and defeated.

Suzaku dipped down and kissed him on the forehead, as Lelouch at last felt sleep begin to claim him.

"It doesn't matter whether you love me back right now. You want me, Lelouch, and I believe it. It's enough." Lelouch stirred. "Shh, rest. If this is what you want, then I'll do it when you ask… while I still fight to take down Zero."


	9. Egos

"You've sworn off Suzaku Kururugi?" The strand of cheese that hung from C.C.'s mouth sagged further. She didn't slurp it up.

"Why are you acting so surprised? Zero has been exiled. There's no more perfect time than now."

Lelouch tucked her boots neatly into the closet, wishing he didn't have to keep his clothes stored in the same space as hers. Cheese-kun squished when C.C. shifted on the couch, and Lelouch was careful not to look over. He was very glad to be back with C.C., but her habits and questions might soon drive him batty.

"Surprised?" C.C. repeated, her voice like soft bells. "Surprised is what Kallen was, when you told the Black Knights your plan. She supported it, but she yelped something about how you couldn't leave Kururugi. She didn't believe you really meant to escape, until she was aboard the iceberg ship beside you. I, however, was not shocked to find you running from the boy who's emotions scare you more than Charles."

"Kallen knows?" Lelouch exclaimed, stricken enough by it to hang up his Zero cape in the wrong spot. Enough not to scold C.C. for her insults. Before he could express more mortification, more annoyance, C.C. added, "Tamaki knows too."

"This… this is abominable!" If Lelouch had been eating pizza as well, he would have choked. "C.C., if you gave me away…."

C.C. picked up another pizza slice. "I told nobody, as you asked. We're accomplices, Lelouch. I don't want to deal with fanatics any more than you do. If Diethard should discover it—"

"Abominable! He'd film abominations!"

"—the world would blame your shared attraction alone for half the battles in this rebellion. It isn't hard to see that Zero could be gay once someone mentions it."

Her words stopped Lelouch's tirade cold. He felt himself turn slightly pale.

C.C. was trying to be quaint, to suggest the whole world could recognize the desire he and Suzaku shared, and brush off the opposition between them by chalking their actions up to their frustrations. Only—only fangirls did such things. Yet parts of what C.C. had said struck home, and Lelouch didn't want to have to work out implications.

"Anyway," C.C. mused around a bite, "Kallen bullied Loud Mouth into silence. She's concerned for your wellbeing – in her own hesitant, jealous way…."

Lelouch let his anxiety pass. He swallowed uncertainty down, and glanced at C.C. while she savored every greasy pizza topping. "You and Kallen have spent lots of time getting to know each other."

He wondered, were they happy? Had they got along without him? He hoped the burden of his secrets hadn't driven them to inter-female war.

"My, my – what an inappropriate tone. I hear it's a malady of gays to think everyone else could be as gay as they are. Are you the reason for it, Lelouch?"

Lelouch pulled off his cravat. "Witch."

"Gay pervert."

"Like you never would believe."

C.C.'s eyes flew wide, before she matched Lelouch's curling grin. However, before Lelouch could say,  _It's good to be home, C.C.,_  her normally less-expressive face melted like pizza cheese back to its typical plainness.

She said, "You should tell Kallen what really happened – otherwise she'll be preoccupied in battle. You can't take over the Chinese Federation with a pilot in that state. She might get injured on the field, or worse."

Lelouch's heartbeat skipped. "Nothing happened. And Kallen is too talented to make mistakes like that." He didn't like anyone talking down his most accomplished, heroic pilot. No one on earth held a candle to Kallen. Except for maybe—

"Then tell me. Why?"

Lelouch shut the closet.  _Why swear off Suzaku?_  He'd chosen to let go of the person he'd fought so hard to win, and she really couldn't fathom why? Lelouch had never, ever won. What sense was there in continuing pursuit?

Some birds weren't meant to be caged. They'd peck your eyes out instead – and such was merely part of their nature. Suzaku's disposition was impossible to oppose, impossible to manipulate, to contain, to control. If Lelouch kept trying, he'd only lose faster.

Lelouch said, "We were getting in too deep."

C.C. replied, coolly, "And that's no metaphor?"

Lelouch sealed his mouth in a line, and left the weight of it behind him as he walked out of the room. He went into the bathroom and ran himself a frigid bath.

What he couldn't say to C.C. was,  _He told me that he loved me_. Then clarity had come with sleep, in the bright light of new day. Suzaku's confession in the moonlight, Suzaku's poison, Refrain, lust, attraction…. All fatal to Lelouch and his goals. As Zero, he couldn't let selfish pursuits draw him. Zero was not a man, he was a symbol. Symbols didn't feel desire.

Lelouch let the bubbles froth until they kissed the rim of the tub, wondering if pampering himself for once would make him feel any better than a shower. Shirley had once told him bubble baths were how people relaxed, but he doubted it, stepping into the soft fragrance.

The water stayed like ice, but now it matched Lelouch's heart. Retreating to the Chinese Federation had been perfect. Lelouch's goodbye to Suzaku had been to leave the remaining Japanese in Suzaku's hands. Lelouch had relied on their minimal trust, for one last time. They'd made each other promises, to carry out their separate-yet-similar goals. The endnote had been strong, and well-timed, but now cold purpose ruled Lelouch's actions. If Suzaku saw Lelouch again….

If Suzaku saw Lelouch again, it wouldn't likely be Lelouch. Lelouch had given Sayoko the best instructions he could, regarding their attraction – and how she was to dissolve it.

He didn't want to think right now of how it could go wrong. Sayoko would somehow keep his relationships harmonious. When Lelouch took Sayoko's place as himself, as now and again he would have to, his brushes with Suzaku would be short, contained, and celibate.

When Lelouch came out of the bathroom with droplets clinging to his chest and to his neck, Kallen – alone in his quarters – shouted and turned red in greeting.

"I'm-I'm sorry! I didn't know you— But sheesh, put on some clothes, why don't you!" She spun around to turn her back, but not before she plucked a pillow off the couch and hurled it at his head.

"Are you throwing things at me, or at Zero?" Lelouch draped his towel across his bare shoulders. "One is insubordination. The other suggests that you have an attraction." He set the pillow down after he plumped it, and dabbed the towel down his bare torso while she still had her back turned. Droplets still threatened the hem of his pants.

"You have too big of an ego, Lelouch." Kallen regained herself and turned around. "I just came in to check on you. I'm sick enough of pizza that I rounded up some of the others who could cook, like Chiba and Lakshata, and they—"

"Lakshata cooks?"

"—they made a curry. If you don't want any, that's fine with me."

"Lakshata made curry?"

"She only agreed because she said it's the farthest thing from pudding she could think of. Its taste is complex, and comforting, like bundling in a warm blanket of leaves and sleeping outside at a campfire—" Kallen halted, at Lelouch's noise of wonder.

Lelouch quickly erased his expression. He did, however, lift the shirt he'd left ready on the back of an armchair. He buttoned it on, so Kallen would stop flushing. He said, "You're an eloquent, genuine woman."

"Eh?" Kallen flushed again, this time more brightly.

"On top of that, you're Zero's ace. Is it any wonder people think you could be Zero's lover?"

"L-l-l-lover?!" Kallen backed up.

"You prefer 'concubine?'"

"E-Everyone thinks that about C.C., not me! I wouldn't be caught dead tarnishing my reputation!" Kallen swallowed, and Lelouch – before he could help himself – decided to draw nearer. Why not test C.C.'s suggestions?

Exactly how gay did Lelouch – did Zero – come across? Now seemed an opportune time to explore implications. If it were Kallen, he trusted her to be honest with him – as he'd trust her to do almost anything. In fact, Lelouch felt safe both physically and mentally in Kallen's presence. Always.

Not just anyone could haul him out of Refrain-riddled, dark despair.

"Oy," Kallen mumbled, when he stepped beside her.

"Kallen."

"What."

She turned her cheek when Lelouch gripped her arm. Her gaze darted only once to his damp hair.

Lelouch looked at her cherry flush. Her blue eyes like sapphires, expressing will that was impossible to break. Her stance remained rigid. Kallen would never flee – from anyone or anything within reason. She'd fight. That was why she had slapped him before. And Lelouch realized that if he did this wrong another time, she wouldn't mind slapping him again.

What should he do, with Kallen's complex feelings? Gently test her? Use her to assess his ability with women? Lelouch wouldn't dream of dishonoring Kallen or bruising her pride, but what about his unanswered questions and distress? What about hers? C.C. had given him reason to think that Kallen's concern for him went beyond loyalty to Zero. If he moved correctly this time, would she deny him?

Lelouch looked at the berry color of her hair. Why did his curiosity flare up most around Kallen? Why had Lelouch felt like  _Kallen_  ought to be the one to comfort him, that time? Shirley made Lelouch want to sleep forever on her lap, and listen to her gentle voice. She comforted by nature, when Lelouch didn't even recognize he needed it. But when he  _did_  recognize? When it slapped him in the face? Requesting comfort of Shirley would probably cause her a heart attack. Shirley embodied an innocence and purity that Kallen never did – at least, not when Kallen cast off her fake persona. C.C. made Lelouch want to shout at her, then smile, then shove her face into a steaming pizza. A woman like C.C. annoyed and brutally motivated him more than brought him comfort. C.C. was better at harsh, direct reality checks. Yes, Shirley and C.C. were different. But Kallen….

Kallen made Lelouch feel human – by reacting around him as she would around anybody and everybody else. With Zero, it might be different, but alone with Lelouch…. Kallen spoke her opinions, argued, challenged him, did whatever things she wanted. She yawned without covering her mouth. She wore slightly revealing clothes and moved in them like she wore armor. Her strong will and competency made Lelouch think he might yet be competent too, if he followed his own will the way she did hers. Kallen had a reason to fight, and was smart. She made Lelouch want to ponder the grayscale in everything – in war, in politics… and in attraction.

Lelouch's eyes roved to her lips. They weren't the gentle or comforting kind. What did Lelouch see in her? When she'd fallen on him – or rather, caught herself right over him – had it perhaps reminded Lelouch of other, similar incidents, in which someone he'd sworn off of had done the same?

Lelouch let her arm go immediately. "Kallen. I've asked Kaguya to bring me as her escort to Tianzi's wedding party."

"Huh?"

"But she's not the main player. Zero is, of course – and so it's Zero who needs an acceptable escort. Or bodyguard, if you will. Will you go with me?"

Kallen paused. She said, "Why ask me, Lelouch? Why not just order me to go?"

"It's  _because_ I'm Lelouch that I didn't give an order."

Kallen said, "Would Zero have ordered it?"

Lelouch didn't answer. He told Kallen it was getting late, that both of them needed to sleep if they wanted to function at the wedding party. Kallen saluted him and walked away. On her way out, Lelouch spoke across the couch to her broad shoulders.

"Zero wouldn't be half the man he is without his Captain at his side. He'd do anything to keep her there."

* * *

The party looked pompous, but the gourmet food delicious. Lelouch's stomach reacted upon entering the scene, yet it wasn't because of a hunger for food… nor for a particular person.

Lelouch felt rather nauseated.

It wasn't until Schneizel ordered the arrangement of the chess match that Lelouch had time to digest Suzaku's presence.  _He's just here for the party_ , Lelouch convinced himself,  _not for military back-up. There isn't any danger._ There was no way Schneizel could have moved that quickly, as if he expected a battle already. All Lelouch needed to do was cow Schneizel, evaluate him through the chess match. Evaluate himself.

And then he'd win.

Yet Lelouch couldn't decide if he was confident or simply nervous. He made sure he  _looked_  confident. He glanced up, now and then, over the board, to see Suzaku standing in the background, stony-faced. Did Suzaku think Zero was up to no good, or did he read Lelouch's lounge the way it was meant to be read – as broad self-possession? What could Zero be up toif it  _wasn't_  no good, having immediately dared this after getting himself exiled?

Lelouch wondered if Suzaku was upholding his half of their promise, or whether Suzaku had instantly decided this chess game meant Lelouch did not intend to uphold his.

Schneizel's gloved hand moved a piece. It captured his rook. Lelouch retaliated. He took Schneizel's knight. Schneizel's  _white_  knight.

Lelouch glanced up again, at Suzaku.  _If only_ , he took the beat to think – and realized too late those were the wrong thoughts to be having. He'd sworn off Suzaku. Sworn off. Why did his eyes pin themselves on Suzaku's chest, and on his slender, well-cut waist? How come his heart swelled? Why was Lelouch remembering the last time he'd seen that Rounds uniform, dropping to his couch and to his floor in glittering pieces as Suzaku removed his shining clothes?

"It's difficult to follow your line of vision while you're in a mask, Zero. Is it safe to assume that you keep glancing up not at me, but at those who support my side of this match? Are you surprised that they show little fear?"

Lelouch snapped his attention back to Schneizel, who leaned back in his chair and calmly folded his hands, unaware of Lelouch's sweat.

"Three Knights of the Round, my personal aide-de-camp, and a number of other exceptional minds. Formidable, to say the least. Ah, but excuse me – it's rude of me to brag in the presence of Princess Kaguya and your ace pilot, who is named…." Schneizel couldn't recall Kallen's name.

"Kozuki Kallen," Kallen supplied, before Lelouch could speak a word. Lelouch had never heard so much resolution in a simple name. She stood there like a weathered mast, more steadfast than even Suzaku. Her eyes shone like the fires of a forge, and Lelouch understood that she was proud to guard his side.

She gave Lelouch strength. He played through his chess game. When Nina burst in, wielding a knife, Kallen stepped in front of him with zero hesitation, and disarmed their mutual school companion without letting the staunch look splashed across her features waver.

Surely… surely Lelouch would have been dead without Kallen, a hundred times over.

Zero left the wedding party on that thought, though Schneizel's manipulations came back to crowd and harangue his mind after. Kaguya leapt up and hugged him, back on the ship, expressing her joy that Zero had done well. Lelouch thanked her – genuinely – but he went back to his quarters deeply brooding.

Kallen had beaten him there. She sat on the couch, with her arms folded beneath her breasts, and legs spread apart in the most unfeminine way Lelouch had ever seen. C.C. was in the bathtub, but she'd left a half-eaten pizza to get cold atop the table. Before Lelouch could shut the door, or loosen his gloves, Kallen said to him, "You were looking at Suzaku, weren't you." She kept it very casual.

Lelouch hesitated, with his hand upon his mask. Then he took it off, and allowed her to see his complex expression.

Kallen, for a moment, was struck beyond silence. Lelouch turned away, set his mask on its stand, and began to take his gloves off, finger by finger.

"Why, Lelouch?" Her voice came out broken. "Why don't you tell him the things you feel, then?"

"What do I feel, Kallen? Emotions he would never want to acknowledge? As Zero, man of miracles, the least I can do is allow people their illusions."

"But, you two were best friends!" Kallen's fist  _piffed_  on the cushion by her thigh. "A-And if you're more than that, even more reason…." She started to flush, but shook her head to clear it. "Kururugi's power on our side could change the tide of battle. Didn't you say so yourself, Lelou—Zero?"

Lelouch unbuttoned his clothes and looked at her. "Do you like Suzaku, Kallen?"

"What do you mean? He's just misguided, and stuck under Britannia's thumb. He's a throwaway soldier to them, even as a Rounds, and he's too dense to realize his efforts are doing nothing but wrecking the pride he should have as a Japanese. If—if only he didn't listen to them!"

"Do you want to stop fighting him? Is it too hard for you?"

Kallen sat up straighter, and looked at Lelouch like he had asked her to produce a melon from her pocket. "No, Lelouch," she whispered. "I'll never forget what I learned about him and his warped beliefs on that crazy island."

"He was kind to you."

"What's wrong with you?!" Her anger reared up like a crimson-and-flame dragon. Like the Guren. "Everything he did deserves my  _finishing him!_  A guy like that? I'll put him out of his misery!" She rumbled it, and Lelouch felt her surge of power. Then, as if she recovered herself, or remembered who she spoke to, she fell back on the couch again and said, "But the final decision is yours."

Lelouch paused only half an instant. He took off his jacket and smiled grimly.

"No, Kallen. The decision is yours.  _You_  are his opponent – the one I've chosen to bring Suzaku and his Knightmare Lancelot down. If you choose to finish him, you'll be dealing Zero his most advantageous move."

* * *

Progressions over the next few days seemed hardly firm or advantageous. Lelouch's battle for the Chinese Federation was perhaps his most nerve-wracking battle to date. Tianzi flummoxed him after her capture. Kaguya's hands became full, consoling her. Lakshata broke bad news after bad news; nobody was thrilled about the Shen-Hu Knightmare Frame, never mind excited to see who piloted it. No time for resupplies. Schneizel and the Rounds showed up… and the enemy captured Kallen.

They. Captured. Kallen.

_Panic_  was not a sufficient word. What Lelouch felt at her abduction was terror. He didn't have time to think about fault. He couldn't justify a way to go after her without endangering the rest of the Black Knights. All Lelouch knew was that he simply had to save her, so he came up with excuses to regain her... but he failed.

He promised Kallen he'd get her back. He'd come for her. But the transmission cut, and—

Lelouch simply rerouted his pain into tactics and vengeance and crushing Li Xing-ke.

Two things only got him through the battle and its aftermath. The Shinkiro and his phone call with Shirley. Lelouch would have preferred that Shirley didn't mention love. And yet because she had, he was been able to triumph.

Lelouch decided to go back to Ashford. He bid Xing-ke, Tianzi, Kaguya, and his Black Knights a formal goodbye. He bid C.C. goodbye privately, and regretted leaving her again so soon.

Especially when Rolo told him what Sayoko had done with his life and his schedule.

"I— I kissed Shirley?" Lelouch cried.

Rolo said, looking wry and irritated, "He didn't even get to reap the benefit of it himself, Sayoko. Stop making things so hard for my big brother."

What could Lelouch do, at that point? He supposed one day of submission to Sayoko's plans for him wouldn't harm him. Except Lelouch was wrong.

He was wrong.

He ran around the campus, for short dates with countless women. He ran around beneath the library, through the OSI's secret chambers. He flew in the Shinkiro back to the Chinese Federation and returned again in record time, with that special boxed lunch churning a little in his stomach.

Then it was time for Lelouch to be at the amusement park – the one where Mao had been arrested, shot, and – to Lelouch's irritation even now – not killed. The site of the place turned his stomach that much extra.

Nothing about today was helping him sort out his problems. His reputation was going to suffer now with or without Sayoko's interpretations of his character, but there was no way he could keep appointments with all of these girls and not collapse. The physical exhaustion would destroy him, and if not that, it would be the mental trauma.

Lelouch tried not to think about it, and found his target without too much trouble. Cheryl MacDonald, blonde, year two, in a red printed dress Lelouch would never be caught wearing – dead, or in drag, or at one of Milly's festivals. Cheryl had some of the top grades in her class, and she was captain of the Croquet Club, but still.

Intelligence didn't mean Lelouch had to put up with torture. A line ought to be drawn somewhere. Lelouch snuck away from her, cursing Sayoko's ruthless schedule another time.

As he did so, he heard from behind him a loud voice. "Ahaha, Suzakuuu~!" He turned – at the same time somebody else did.

Somebody with tousled hair, sunglasses, and a sorry cringe.

"Gino," Lelouch heard very clearly, picking up the strain in Suzaku's voice, "It's fine if you have fun, but remember, we're still members of–" Suzaku stopped.

Lelouch's motion of whipping around had caught Suzaku's eye, the way Suzaku's had caught his.

Suzaku spun away very quickly, holding Gino's gaze so Gino didn't look around. "Gino," Lelouch heard, and the words had their dead tint to them, "Can I meet you at the roller coaster, later? Don't forget that I'm the viceroy's aide-de-camp on top of everything, and since Zero signed a treaty just an hour or so ago..."

Gino said, "Yeah, since he did, you have more meetings?" and laughed with a humor that seemed unsuited to the situation.

"Meetings by phone," Suzaku said. "I won't take long."

Lelouch sighed. He knew better than to flee. He watched Cheryl, apprehensively, as seconds ticked by… while in his peripherals Suzaku waved to his fellow Rounds and finally walked over to him.

"Lelouch. What are you–"

"Not right now."

Lelouch made a show of glancing around, before pointing out the blonde female with great anxiety. "The president wants to ruin my life. She's set me up today with multiple dates. There's no way to get out of them, and soon I'm going to have some kind of panic attack." If Suzaku were good for nothing else, he might still be good for a plan of escape.

Suzaku frowned, and looked back at Cheryl. "Why dates?" he asked, with a little bit of rancor.

Lelouch's eyes flew open wide. He played himself as Lelouch Lamperouge, but he didn't hide his exasperated undertone. "What, didn't you know? Our break-up makes me Ashford's most eligible bachelor. Of course the president wants to destroy my reputation over it."

"'Break-up?'" Suzaku asked wryly. "Can you call it that if it was never a relationship?" His eyes weren't visible behind his sunglasses.

Lelouch maintained his air of urgency and feigned indifference. "I'm surprised you sound so bitter. You agreed, didn't you, when I gave you that list of reasons why, despite our intimacy, we were better off as friends without the benefits? You sat there for a long time and stared at me, but you agreed." Lelouch felt bad for Sayoko. "In any case, Suzaku – quickly, get me out of here." Cheryl had begun to crane her neck, like she could smell Lelouch's flight.

"You have the nerve to ask me for help, but you're the one who did this to yourself?"

Suzaku gave Lelouch his shoulder and started wandering, in the opposite direction of Anya and Gino.

_He really is bitter_ , Lelouch realized, the epitome momentarily shocking him cold. Suzaku had an ego, and that ego was stinging. Suzaku didn't like it.

Lelouch didn't either, and he didn't want to explore it. He picked up his feet and followed. At least following Suzaku made him blend in better with the crowd; he moved as if he had a destination or a purpose – not like the delinquent he was, trying to hide from a normal female student.

"Frankly, I don't see why you're acting like I've rubbed you the wrong way," Lelouch expressed. "I thought of your wellbeing, when I chose to call this off."

"You chose," Suzaku said. "Are you hearing your words? Relationships are two-way, Lelouch."

"Whatever. I thought you just acknowledged at last that it wasn't a relationship. Don't go peeling apart my word choice. If you had a problem with drawing a line, why didn't you say anything the other day? It's hypocritical to go arguing now." A group of children with cotton candy floated past them in a pink-and-purple cloud.

Suzaku swept his long blue jacket out of their way, as both of them kept walking through the crowds. "The other day, you weren't yourself."

Lelouch slipped out of step, as he stared at the back of Suzaku's head. It took him until the group of children had gone to recover.

"Well. I still think it will be better for you this way. A young and dashing Knight of Rounds, who also attends Ashford and excels, at least in gym, and who has dreams of ruling his own Area…. Such a knight should watch his image. I've said that from the very beginning."

"That people look at gayness wrong?"

"Indeed. Plus you're not gay, are you."

Suzaku stopped abruptly, near the line for the Ferris wheel. He removed his sunglasses. Lelouch almost walked into him.

Suzaku said, "And that's a fact?"

Lelouch said, feeling flustered but not hesitating, "Yes. At the very least, Suzaku, you're bi. Otherwise, you wouldn't have had such deep feelings for Euphie. You wouldn't have such grand chemistry with Shirley."

"With Shirley?" Suzaku's hand twitched.

Lelouch watched a young couple climb into a Ferris wheel car. "As much as I think Shirley could do better, I can't deny that you're both two of my best friends. So woo her, Suzaku. Pursue her like you mean it. Don't betray her trust, and I'll be fine."

The Ferris wheel went around. His eyes trailed it.

"Let me get this straight," Suzaku said, from beside him, while watching the Ferris wheel too. "You split us apart because you think Shirley and I…?"

"It only makes sense, doesn't it?" Lelouch said. "That's why you kept on having suspicions about  _me_ and Shirley. Because all along, you've had one eye on her, and her eyes have been pinned on you."

He thought,  _Forgive me, Shirley, if you really like him. Forgive me too, if you meant it when you said you don't._

The amusement park's speakers warbled out some brassy music. Suzaku said, "Do you really believe that?"

_No. I broke up because I've realized I don't have the_ luxury  _of poison as sweet as yours. My time for real poison one day will come. For now, I can't be self-pitying, needy, or wanton. I can't afford to ache for you, or wonder if I love you back. So no._

Lelouch said, reflexively, "Yes."

Suzaku tucked his sunglasses into his pocket, turning sharply to scowl at the distant merry-go-round. Lelouch tried again not to think about Mao, and how C.C. had been bloody on the pavement when he'd found her. He thought instead of Shirley.  _I'm sorry I used you to make my excuses._ But how else to deceive Suzaku?

His legs were growing rapidly sore, telling Lelouch they would rather be moving. Tiring, this damn schedule. If only he could finally get to fleeing.

No sooner had Lelouch thought it than did Cheryl emerge from the crowd. Lelouch checked his cell phone. He was fifteen minutes late now to their date…. She wouldn't give up on him until at least forty.

"Suzaku."

"What."

"Our conversation has been lovely and nostalgic, but whether or not you agree with my stance doesn't change that I'm through, and that I don't intend to stay close to you." Cheryl turned. Lelouch stepped instinctively next to Suzaku, to conceal himself behind Suzaku's broader shoulders.

Suzaku moved, to regain his personal space. He gave Lelouch a look that said his threads were as taut as his frown, and that Lelouch was twanging those threads now at his own peril. Yet… for a moment, they'd been so close that Lelouch could smell Suzaku's sun-warmed skin. A fine alternative to the grease-scent of corndogs and popcorn.

"Lelouch." It was a warning. Strained.

Lelouch looked at those dark green eyes. He ignored the twist-and-roll that their eye contact caused inside him. He made a decision, without consulting Suzaku.

He began walking again. Suzaku followed. After they had slipped past Cheryl, Lelouch changed their course, moving away from the crowd and toward the line of food stalls. Suzaku didn't question the decision. Their pace quickened.

"We're not discussing this further," Lelouch told him, to which Suzaku replied only, "Fine."

"I don't think we should be seen together here," Lelouch added.

"I know."

"It sends the wrong signals."

"I know. I thought we weren't discussing it."

It was Suzaku who took the corner to around  _behind_  the food stalls, walking purposefully toward the spot farthest from human presence. Lelouch kept perfect stride with him. They neared an overturned crate and a cracked sign. The sign said,  _Hotdogs._  Neither of them did more than glance at it.

"Let's end it more firmly," Suzaku told him.

Lelouch narrowed his eyes. Suzaku took a step that matched his, inch for inch, so that they both stood near the wall.

"Fine," said Lelouch.

"Fine," Suzaku said.

"Fine."

Lelouch uttered it. They moved in tandem.

Lelouch fisted Suzaku's shirt, weak in the knees at Suzaku's radiant anger. Suzaku grabbed him by the chin. As if drawn toward each other on opposite ends of a line, they fumbled for purchase on the faded brick behind them. Lips collided, forceful. Careless. Lelouch gasped, and Suzaku breathed his name.

Lelouch felt the brick chafe his back, and didn't care. Suzaku felt signs of Lelouch's oncoming hardness, and didn't care; he sped up, instead of stopping like a gentleman would have. Rough fingers raked down Lelouch's abdomen, stole under his shirt, pressed nails into his hips. Lelouch pulled on Suzaku's collar and forced Suzaku into a deeper kiss.

Their mouths slid against each other slickly, parting only to allow enchanted breaths. Lelouch became positively violent when he knew he wanted more, yanking on Suzaku's hair, gripping too hard at the back of Suzaku's neck. He bit too sharply on Suzaku's lower lip.

Suzaku fought him move for move. He tore at Lelouch's collar and bit into the crook of Lelouch's shoulder, making Lelouch's hips grind up – and into Suzaku's perfectly placed thigh. Lelouch cried out and Suzaku did it again, and again, mercilessly – until they were much more than grasping at random, much more than kissing like kissing was battle. Suzaku made him move, until Lelouch saw almost stars; Lelouch dragged nails down Suzaku's back, and muffled himself in Suzaku's shoulder lest he cry loudly enough to bring authorities to find them.

Suzaku applied his rousing attentions until Lelouch near broke with pleasure. Then, at the crest of a groan that Lelouch identified as distinctly  _not his_ , Suzaku snagged Lelouch's lips and tilted Lelouch's head back as far as it would go, drinking and drinking of Lelouch's taste. Lelouch felt commanded, controlled, and he liked it. Release, to let himself be governed in this way. Suzaku's tongue crept out, and plunged inside his mouth, dipping, twirling, doing things he'd never before dared, until they were kissing so hotly as to gasp and pant against each other's lips. The sensation drove Lelouch to moan harder.

They changed position and did it some more – tongues mingling, Lelouch tracing patterns through the hair at the nape of Suzaku's neck, Suzaku clutching him too tightly at the waist. They kept on, as if stopping were some vague, untested theory – mingling in a desperate display of everything they both knew they should damn well not be doing, and then—

"Lelouch," Suzaku's breath hitched on his name. "Lelouch, I'll lose control. I— Stop."

Desperate. Pleading. As if  _he_ hadn't been the one to tempt Lelouch into letting this happen.

But wait. But wait. Suzaku, distressed?

"You… s-started it," Lelouch mumbled, his fingers wrestling clumsily with the strap Suzaku wore across his shoulder. He followed it to Suzaku's belt, over that damnably ugly mustard-colored shirt, and he got dizzy, his ego swelling despite what he knew he ought to fear, intensely. The danger.

Suzaku unleashed a needy sound and grabbed Lelouch's hands, to make him cease the endless touching. Lelouch tried to catch his breath and read Suzaku's expression.

Flushed. And tensed, as if in pain. Suzaku was unmistakably  _turned on_.

They kissed again, before either of them could stop it. Neither of them had the discipline then. Suzaku said "Mm," against Lelouch's mouth, and Lelouch realized Suzaku's actions had gentled into something less violent… yet something twice as powerful than moments ago. Wherever Suzaku touched him now, the grip was stronger, harder, but careful.

Deliberate, as if Suzaku tried not just to ravage Lelouch to the breaking point, but to make him feel inexpressibly satiated. To make them  _both_  feel very good.

Lelouch had been wrong; Suzaku's desire hadn't died. What did it mean? What did it—

_I love you_.

"Suzaku—"

"Mm—I… stop, Lelouch. We should. W-we… I know, but I can't."

" _Stop_."

It wasn't a request. It became a command as Lelouch took control.

Suzaku halted immediately, his body following the order long before his satisfaction-muddled mind caught up.

"I—I'm sorry." Suzaku said. His brain kicked in at last. He straightened, shook his head, and closed his eyes. He said, "And what I mean by that is, everything takes two. I'm  _not_  sorry."

"Nor am I," Lelouch said clearly, despite that Suzaku's tone suggested he well ought to feel regretful. He watched Suzaku open his eyes and look a mixture of shocked and irate. "You deserved that, as a lesson to show you precisely why our interaction isn't good. Now  _I_  have to go out on a date with another girl, and you have to return to Lord Gino and Lady Anya. Your clothing and your hair are one big mess, making your appearance almost as inappropriate as your behavior. You touched me once or twice almost like you would touch a woman. I'm not here to be your passing fancy! There's no need to force anything between us further. What will people think, Suzaku? They expect better from you, and they expect you with a woman. It's not just the Rounds. I mean all of our friends. Learn to put your position before passion."

As Lelouch talked, he smoothed his own clothes and neatened his hair. Suzaku stepped back and examined the brick wall near the ground, curling and uncurling both his hands.

"Did you hear me, Suzaku?" Lelouch received no answer.

But soon enough, an answer came – after a silence in which Lelouch realized they'd just made out in the amusement park alley.

Suzaku said, "You're unbelievable."

"Oho? I told you this needed to end. This was the proof you needed, that's all. Go back to where you belong after this. I'll see you at school, and we'll study then for chemistry."

Suzaku said, "Unbelievable," and turned.

He didn't get to take a step. Lelouch made sure  _he_  walked away first. To the sound of his own steady footfalls, he left, and decided he'd had enough twisted romantic interaction.


	10. Buttons

No matter how hard Lelouch tried to gain distance, the gap only closed again, every damn time. He couldn't even escape Suzaku while he was sleeping. Lelouch consistently, incessantly dreamed.

"Lelouch." Suzaku held him down – and kissed his jaw, his ear, his neck. The grip where he pinned Lelouch's wrist beside the pillow was trembling, tender, like Suzaku was nearly breaking.

And here – in this special, regulated place – he was.

"Lelouch…." A lot more desperate now.

Lelouch glanced out the dream window, opening his eyes in time to see Suzaku squint his shut. Lelouch caught Suzaku around the neck and drew him close, until green eyes opened again and fell on purple.

Suzaku's eyes were sharp and clear. Lelouch's lucid dream skills were fantastic.

It hadn't been quite this controlled at first; his subconscious that night had merely wandered. But as the night wore on, and as Lelouch neared the end of his eight-hour sleep cycle, he'd entered into REM sleep knowing full well he was dreaming.

In his first, regular dream, he'd been navigating a red tunnel full of clouds. He'd taken out the trigger button he often carried, and he'd intended to use it to explode the clouds away; they clogged up his lungs and his mind and his vision. Instead, the button he'd sought for help had become proof that Lelouch was safe, and actually dreaming.

In the waking world, when Lelouch pushed any button, something always, unfailingly happened. Soldiers exploded. Clothes hangers popped open. _Something_ Lelouch expected occurred, be it a harmless event or one bloody and violent. Lelouch made it a point to try to push a button every day – for the purpose of testing whether reality was real. He'd push a button and ask himself, "Now, is the result of this button-press normal? Is it working the way it should inside the confines of reality?" He'd ask himself, each time, if he believed he was awake. Then he asked why.

Ever since he had been given the Geass… ever since Lelouch had crossed paths with his unexplained and near-magical power, he'd slaved to master this. This lucid dreaming. The Geass sometimes put strange pictures in mind – like when C.C. kissed him, or when she touched him at the same time as Suzaku – and Lelouch wanted to make sure that from now on, whatever he saw was his own.

That meant exercising self-awareness even while sleeping.

Brief checks like Lelouch's button check were how he verified true wakefulness and self-awareness while he faced his days. Because he'd turned the checks into such a habit, the habit manifested itself even in his dreams. And when it did – and when dreaming Lelouch pushed a button – the button would invariably react strangely in its strange dream world. The button wouldn't do what he had programmed it to do, or it would simply refuse to react to his pressure. When that happened – and it only did in dreams – it stirred Dream Lelouch until he thought, _There's something weird._ It wasn't so hard, after that, for his dream self to realize instantly, _I'm dreaming._

The mind could then switch from its dreaming subconscious into something fully conscious and aware, like in daytime – but all without the body once awaking. Lucid dreams felt crisp, felt _real_ , and fear always evaporated. When a subject understands he's in a dream, he knows through waking logic that his body is safe. Asleep in bed, no consequence or repercussion from a dream could cause real damage.

_And that means I can do whatever I want._

With his conscious mind, and yet a limitless dream world, Lelouch could mold whatever fantasy he wanted.

Sometimes Lelouch used his lucid dreams to reviews Zero's strategies and plots. Sometimes he retreated to an open field of flowers and laid down to relax, if he'd spent a day too stressed. But tonight, Lelouch had already been dreaming of somebody. Somebody he'd sensed inside the red and clouded tunnel. He'd felt no need to shift the tone of the dream, after he'd blinked, and felt thrills, and grown lucid. He'd simply decided to enhance things for himself.

By the time Lelouch had started reforming his dream around him – to move himself to his bright bedroom at Ashford, where he felt his comforts seep inside to warm him – Suzaku already stood there, trembling with wanting…. And prepared to couple with him.

Lelouch stopped thinking about it, then – about reality, and how shocked he still was that he could do this while he stayed asleep. Lucid dream time was limited by the REM cycle, which was only thirty minutes long. Lelouch pushed awe aside so that he wouldn't lose an instant. He refocused again, concentrated on what he wanted, and drew Suzaku in too close.

Suzaku, who in here was someone caring, flustered, tentative.

Lelouch breathed out, "I know what you want. And you know that I'm going to allow it." He felt his own body quake with the anticipation.

"Mmff, god—" Suzaku froze, his voice trapped in his throat. Lelouch canted his hips beneath Suzaku's taut, hard body and shuddered; he watched Suzaku's Adam's apple dip with longing and deeper confliction. Their slick erections slid against each other, creating friction too good to ignore.

Friction that, for all he could tell, was undeniably, perfectly _real_.

"It's more than that. _I_ want it. Don't be afraid to give it to me, Suzaku." Lelouch moved his hips so that he pressed against Suzaku again.

Suzaku cried out, and the cry was a beg. A beg to stop, a beg to keep going; his mind was long lost and Lelouch's would follow.

"Le _louch…."_

Suzaku moaned into the pillow, from where he had buried his face out of sight. Lelouch ground up into him, setting a rhythm, drawing a further tumble of gasps, moans, and pleas from Suzaku's lips. The morning sun Lelouch had chosen played across his warm, smooth skin. The sheets creased in a wrinkled tangle, damp already from their never-ending struggle. Lelouch reached down – feeling driven, aggressive – feeling close to pleasure-drowned, but not, and excited about it – and closed his hand over Suzaku's ready member. He played fingers along Suzaku's length in long, slow strokes that made Suzaku near collapse on him.

" _Ohh,_ Lelouch—y-yes, but-! _Ah—!"_

"Here." Lelouch tilted his hips upward, and guided Suzaku toward his entrance, impatient. Suzaku's tip pressed hard – nudging, tempting in a way that made Lelouch's eyes roll back and flutter closed, as he fought a wave of heat and broken breathing and surreal tilting sensations. Suzaku rubbed his swollen length along him, driving him mad when he didn't actually enter, and…. If he kept on, Lelouch would snap. Lelouch would die, if Suzaku didn't quit his damnable restraint.

_And yet I want him to resist me harder._

The drawn-out temptation was what Lelouch craved.

Dream Suzaku did as Lelouch's conscious, vivid mind instructed. Suzaku seized Lelouch's hips – to hold him down so that he couldn't grind or buck. The two of them were tired, breathless; Suzaku had already come once, into Lelouch's mouth. Lelouch had licked, and sucked, and moaned, and allowed Suzaku to come not _just_ into his mouth, but across his face and lips, knowing full well that there would be no mess when he woke in Zero's quarters. Lelouch had drawn back while Suzaku was still reeling – still finishing the moan that crested when he came – and he'd stripped off his pants like he'd stripped off his shirt, to let Suzaku see exactly what the act accomplished.

Suzaku had finally _seen_ what came from Lelouch holding him in his mouth, so thick and hard and alluring, and he hadn't know what to do about it.

Except for everything, again. Exactly the way Lelouch wanted.

Suzaku had grown hard again almost instantly, that dark, bayou gaze of his caught unabashedly on Lelouch's erection. After that, a tumble of fast, needy kisses… and here they were. Of course Lelouch would want to push for more. This was _his_ dream. And yet, there was a balance, because even this Suzaku—

Suzaku's voice came out a sob – as if he were in pain, watching Lelouch mutilate a harmless insect… except the insect was Suzaku himself. "We can't, Lelouch. If we finally go this far…."

Even this Suzaku should be realistic.

Even in a dream, Lelouch couldn't – no didn't _want_ – to break Suzaku out of normal character. This slightly shy Suzaku he'd called up, who so casually restrained the lust of pagan gods because Lelouch _wanted_ him to, until that final throbbing moment…. _This_ Suzaku acted that way because real Suzaku would too, and Lelouch knew it. Suzaku would hesitate to hurt him, to embarrass…. Or at least, he would if Lelouch had never been revealed to him as Zero.

Yes, the more innocent version of Suzaku was the Suzaku that Lelouch wanted – that in these dream worlds still wholly existed. This was the side of Suzaku he preferred. The Suzaku who truly could have been, if so much hadn't happened wrong between them.

Lucid dreams could rewrite his mistakes. There were no interfering, real-world punishments or repercussions to contend with.

Only passion.

Lelouch cracked. He grabbed Suzaku's hair and tugged, until Suzaku hissed, and moaned, and kissed him. Tangle of wet lips, teeth and tongue. Raging erections back to sliding on each other, wiping out thought and consequence with slick, hot friction. A moment of it had Lelouch's vocal chords sounding doubly strained – loud and crisp until he wondered if maybe his body cried out in its sleep.

"Yes," he rasped. "Suzaku, give in. _Want me_. Can you still deny this—" long fingers trailed Suzaku's slippery erection, made him shudder, made his cheeks flush hot "—even in the midst of it? Satisfy me; don't make me wait. Just give us both what we want. Go inside."

Lelouch had wanted it so long. He wanted that sturdy length buried within him. Stroking, and stroking, until he couldn't feel a thing but all that drunken, swelling ecstasy.

Suzaku let out a long, deep groan, and shook his head – once again back in the pillow. He shivered another time when Lelouch slid his full, firm grip along where Suzaku was still so hard. Suzaku fought with himself, holding Lelouch too tightly, poised and so close to the thing they both wanted….

That was when Lelouch chose to move, entranced by his mere carnal urges no longer. He'd make his urge their reality, _now_.

He clasped Suzaku without warning by the haunches – loving the way those muscles clenched, how all of Suzaku was rock solid. He pulled forward violently.

The thrust he forced upon them both impaled him, magnificently hard and deep, and then—

Zero's communicator rang. It rang from the side of Lelouch's school bed.

A moment of inaction fell on him. He thought, _That phone isn't supposed to be at Ashford._

The scene around Lelouch began to melt. He realized at once what was going on, and couldn't stop it.

_Don't wake up! I've still got time. I'm still so lucid, and he's still in my bed—_

Lelouch's eyes snapped open. He awoke.

The master bedroom… Zero's quarters… all lay swathed in dark. No sunshine here, no gleaming windows. Lelouch took a deep, slow breath and felt his pillow dimple. On the bedside table, his communicator blared.

In stiff, molasses increments, Lelouch pushed himself up. The covers fell away like bundles of hay – starchy and stiff, not silken and sliding. Lelouch sat up and stared at the wall, ignoring the hard place between his pale, splayed legs.

He ought to use his dreams for something else. He really ought—

The communicator stopped ringing. He'd stayed asleep too long to answer it in time.

Give it a moment. She'd knock at the door.

But then Lelouch remembered – no, she wouldn't. She couldn't. Kallen was no longer on board. Kallen was in confinement somewhere, shackled by the Britannians she hated, unable to keep him company on the Ikaruga.

Lelouch didn't move, even though he should have risen. He didn't wonder who wanted his attention any more; if it wasn't C.C., who would just barge through the door, then it wasn't anyone that couldn't wait while he… adjusted.

Dragging himself from good dreams like that was—

No. It wasn't a good dream, Lelouch insisted. It was just a way to avoid his true reality. The truth was that Suzaku loathed him; Lelouch loathed Suzaku back. So Lelouch stopped dwelling, in that rigid instant.

Instead, he concentrated hard on not turning around to see the empty, unruffled half of his cold, king-sized bed.

* * *

It didn't take him long to work himself back to a normal state of mind. Lelouch picked up his phone in the OSI room, while Rolo, Viletta, and Sayoko wondered how to rescue Zero from his latest, unexpected challenge.

He dialed a number from memory. "Shirley."

"Lelou? You're calling me? After what happened in front of everyone!"

"Shirley, I know you're still mad about my going on those dates. But listen. We have something worse to deal with than the insufficient gift I bought for you and my useless apologies. Today is—"

"Cupid Day, it's Cupid Day! I know! Don't you dare try and get out of it! Y-You may be a hopeless human being, but I'm going to help you shape up, I've decided. I've already found Rolo. Get your butt out of the library and come to the classrooms, so we can make the President's graduation a happy one—"

"Okay, okay."

Lelouch rubbed at his temples. He had wanted to convince Shirley to sit Cupid Day out, except she sounded—

"Hmmph, that's more like it." She sounded determined.

"Hmph."

"And… and L-Lelou?"

"What is it, Shirley." He didn't want Shirley involved, but he couldn't force her. He didn't have a choice. At least he'd make sure it was Viletta who would win his hat.

She told him, "Erm."

"I said I'll be right there," Lelouch delivered.

"I'm-I'm going to play the President's game with everything I have!"

Lelouch gripped his cell phone.

"Mm, that's right! I am!"

All he did was whisper out the truth. "I hope you get matched with the person you want."

He wanted to add, _You deserve it_ , but didn't.

"Lelou," Shirley uttered, "The truth is, that person—"

"I'm coming down, Shirley. Tell the President it will just be a minute."

Cupid Day became a swirling, loud fiasco. He was certain he had bruised from being stuffed inside a locker. He'd never seen Rolo look more irritated, Viletta look more hesitant, or Sayoko look more determined. He'd never heard Rivalz blubber so hard, Milly shout so loudly, or Mia yelp so smugly as when she snatched Lelouch's lumpy hat and dubbed him "my honey." Lelouch had never known himself to use the Geass for such a trivial command as ordering Mia to give the hat back.

He'd never seen a Knightmare Frame break through the high library windows.

In all, Lelouch felt overwhelmed by yet another school event. _Well done, President_ , he thought, registering the result of all the gleeful chaos slowly.

He removed the bloated pink hat from his head. His flush still hadn't cooled.

_And so, I guess… I'm dating Shirley._

He didn't mind reaching out for Shirley's hand. He didn't mind when he caught movement over Shirley's shoulder, either – a familiar uniform and stance.

Suzaku Kururugi, saluting Milly Ashford. Making an appearance after all – despite having been held up by his meetings. Lelouch's eyes flicked to Anya, Knight of Six, who had launched the Mordred that had drawn Suzaku out here. Instead of resenting Anya for illustrating yet again how thick Britannians could be, Lelouch only pitied the girl her lack of brain cells.

His gaze crossed with Suzaku's only once. Suzaku pretended not to notice that Lelouch stood gripping Shirley's hand. Lelouch, to his own relief, realized he didn't care when Suzaku's green eyes dropped. Instead he found Shirley's paler eyes still gleaming.

"You don't mind this, Lelou, do you?"

"It's fine with me, Shirley," he said, and he completely meant it. He didn't even notice when Suzaku finally left. "The truth is," he said, and then he couldn't finish. Emotions he'd held back got caught in his throat. The students kept on cheering for their retiring class president.

Lelouch looked at Milly, who stood in the crowd beaming, but also appeared to be hiding melancholy. A tightness lent a strained look to her eyes. Graduation surely would be tough, but she would have adventures outside school, and live a fulfilled life. Lelouch _wanted_ that life for her. Milly deserved it – like how Shirley deserved the right to smile.

And if Lelouch had control over whether either of them smiled, he'd make sure he elicited those smiles. "Congratulations, President," he called. "And thank you for the push I needed."

A couple of the other students chuckled. Shirley flushed and squeezed his hand harder.

Milly said, "Well of course! I'm always ready to support what you want, Lelouch, but in the end, I'm Ashford's best match-maker. The two of you will be a happy couple! Aren't you glad our Shirley isn't as dangerous a love target as certain other people?"

A couple of the girls who didn't know what Milly meant took offense, and tittered, and started to tease her. The president turned to harass them all back, while Lelouch's heart jumped up into his throat.

She was right. Of course Milly was right.

_Milly_ , Lelouch thought, returning Shirley's pressure with his fingers, _I think the debt of gratitude I owe you has increased._ He felt his face flush yet again with feelings that were tender, soft and unfamiliar.

He didn't _need_ to officially date Shirley, just because they'd swapped hats and the president had said so. The school didn't expect them to follow through if Lelouch didn't desire to. But in the end, Lelouch sincerely _did_. He could see why Milly also thought it was the best decision.

Why not step outside the box, and shock himself with something new? What better time than now, after he'd shed the poison that was Suzaku? Lelouch had thought that Shirley couldn't ever understand him, but after falling down the stairs and letting her hands so gently touch his face….

Lelouch had discovered that Shirley knew his true personality. Not the personality Lelouch had _thought_ was the true one – the cold, determined ex-prince who was Zero. Not the mask Lelouch put on at school, that he'd used sometimes to fool even Nunnally into thinking he was bored by Ashford's academics, and that nothing real could ruffle him. Shirley could unearth Lelouch's weaker, hidden sides – the empathy he buried, the regret, and how he still longed to spend time with his friends. Shirley made him feel like he remained a decent person. Lelouch couldn't describe how it relieved him – to have someone he cared for and respected assert that he was still a person worth believing in. With Shirley, he never felt like he was scum on people's shoes. When Lelouch couldn't believe in himself, he instead could trust _Shirley's_ trust and deep belief in him.

And… Shirley forgave him for terrible behavior. Forgiveness was a gift Suzaku hadn't ever given.

Yes, Shirley forgave him. Lelouch had thought, for too damn long, that he did not deserve any forgiveness. But endless punishment would only break him down, before he finished work as Zero. Relief, small rewards like holding Shirley's hand…. Such gifts were _necessary_.

In the end, honey always outclassed vinegar. Even the harshest commanders knew that. Shirley was the honey – sweet, delicate honey, and Lelouch would finally allow himself to taste it by the spoonfuls.

_I want this. And it isn't self-destructive._ Refreshing for once, to treat himself with the gentleness he wanted to secure for the whole world.

Part of Lelouch still feared getting Shirley too involved in Zero's life, but by now, he understood that the girl had a way of drifting back into his present. He could force Shirley away for her own good, but she'd come back. Perhaps it all meant something big. Perhaps Milly had been more than right about their special chemistry. This could be Fate.

He would protect Shirley better. He'd never know where life at Shirley's side could go if he didn't even try.

The cheering students began to disperse. Lelouch decided it wasn't wrong to let himself grasp something human, something kind and just a little selfish. Something that was not a dream, but real. He already felt healthier, pursuing this instead of sordid pleasures that became more like dark tortures every day as he woke up in the mornings.

_So much for our loophole, Suzaku. You pushed the wrong buttons – or someone in control above us did, hoping that they could get me cornered. Now I've cast our lust aside._

_In reality, and inside my dreams._

Milly glanced over. She winked at Lelouch, and then she wandered off as well.

Lelouch waited until all of the students were gone to catch Shirley's eyes and express something quiet.

"I don't think I'll mind learning to fall in love with you."

And slowly, fervidly, they crushed each other close – in a hug that felt more real than any other ever had.

* * *

At Ikebukuro grand station, the new reality Lelouch had crafted ripped apart. No amount of button pressing could prove it all a dream; no matter what he willed, it wouldn't change. He couldn't go back and erase his mistakes.

_I failed_ , he thought. _She's gone. She's gone. I didn't want to lose anyone again!_

As he walked away, Lelouch left footprints – red with Shirley's precious blood.

He wanted to call someone to remove her body. He wanted to call someone. Maybe Viletta. He'd scream at her, _Why didn't_ you _come here instead?!_ At C.C.. _I can't uphold this contract any more!_ At Suzaku. _You were supposed to protect her! There wasn't any place she should have been safer than beside you, in your special care!_ Would Suzaku only ratchet Lelouch's hatred up higher, every time Lelouch thought he could at least be trusted to act like a good soldier?

He wasn't supposed to lose Shirley! Not Shirley!

A frothy anger stirred behind his eyes, but Lelouch made sure he didn't let it show. He still wanted to call someone. He didn't want to leave her corpse, alone.

Lelouch took out his phone, but his hand began to quake, and he dropped it clumsily as he walked out of the building. He hoped the smoke that still poured from the station's doors and windows would conceal the flinch that hit him as it clattered.

Rolo picked the cell phone up. They both stopped walking, hearing sirens in the distance. Before Rolo could hand the cell phone back, the phone began to ring. The screen lit. An incoming call.

"It's the Knight of Seven," Rolo said, all traces of his brotherly act now subdued. Was that the mode he'd clicked into when he had murdered Shirley? Mechanical and frigid, empty blackness?

Lelouch wanted to find the weapon Rolo had used to kill Shirley, and then gut him with it. Only that was not enough. Lelouch wanted to watch Rolo's skin get peeled off, like peeling away the outside of a ripe banana, exposing moist and pungent insides, and all while Rolo was still conscious enough to feel it. He wanted to dig nails into Rolo's bright Geass eye. He wanted to splice open Rolo's pale stomach with whatever sharp object was closest, or perhaps with Rolo's own knife, then yank out his intestines and drag them wet, hot and pulsating around Rolo's thin neck, or make him eat them before he started to pass out. He'd choke Rolo, with his own still-living innards. Watch the fear flare in his eyes before they went cloudy and flat with delicious, deserved death.

Instead of give in to the impulse, Lelouch said, "I wonder what Suzaku feels the need to call about. I just saw him, and everything was fine."

Rolo frowned down at the ringing cell phone. "I'm almost positive he's discovered Shirley's body. He's her friend too, right? Plus, he wouldn't leave the scene, since he's a Rounds and could have helped out with the evacuation. If he does find her, he'll blame you for what happened. What do you plan to do about it?"

Lelouch imagined forcing a forge-hot poker in slow motion down Rolo's throat. Or slitting all Rolo's arteries while he sagged, cuffed so he couldn't move, and simply watching him bleed out. _You warped, demented, conniving little bastard._

"Shall I pick up his call, and say I'll meet him in your place? If he suspects you again, I can kill him too."

Lelouch didn't spare any thoughts on Suzaku. The only one he wanted dead right now – perhaps even more than his wretched, heartless father – was Rolo, and he would find a way to do it. He wanted to burn Rolo alive, one limb at a time, until his body turned to ashes and he screamed. Lelouch wanted to _listen_ to him scream, while he sat watching and felt only morbid pleasure.

"Rolo." Lelouch felt like laughing out loud. He put his hand on his fake little brother's shoulder. His cell phone finally fell quiet. "Let Suzaku gnash his teeth. His poison can't disrupt my relationship with you any more. You and I have important things to do. I care about _you._ For now, you come first."

"He'll be mad," said Rolo calmly.

Lelouch took his hand off Rolo's shoulder. Control. He must control himself. He could not resort to strangulation.

There were better ways to plan Rolo's death. Lelouch could get creative, and he would. He would wait for it.

"Before we go to the Geass Order to destroy it," Rolo pressed, "you should side-track Suzaku, so he won't get in the way. He's less and less under your careful spell…."

"Talk to him?" Lelouch spat out, a little harsher than he meant to.

"Make up with him, big brother."

There was something deadly in Rolo's pale eyes. Something that suggested that the wrong reaction – the wrong words about Suzaku – would put Lelouch in just as much danger as Shirley had been in when Rolo finished _her_. Lelouch uttered nothing.

"But do it only for the sake of your plan." The deadliness disappeared, in favor of faked, brotherly concern and sympathy. Rolo smiled. "Suzaku's regard is dangerous, as I'm sure now you've learned. He's not an easy foe like Shirley."

_I'm going to kill you, you son of a bitch. If you're jealous of Suzaku, maybe I'll get Suzaku to pin you down, while I dismember you inch by inch with the dullest, most rusted knife that I can find._

"There's no need to waste my time on Suzaku," he told Rolo. He started to walk on.

Rolo hung back long enough to assess him.

"Yes, he'll be upset that Shirley died. And you're right; if he isn't given a believable excuse, his suspicion could awaken and he'll suspect Zero – suspect _me_ – again. He'll think that I encouraged Shirley's death. But what do I care about pain he might go through? People who dwell on the dead don't succeed. Let's go, Rolo. You and I, to the Order. We'll slaughter them all, Rolo. Every last one, so that you and I can build our new future."

"Our intimate one," said Rolo, testing. "Just the two of us."

"Just the two of us," Lelouch agreed. "Loving brothers. Together, and always."


	11. Liabilities

He looked at C.C., while she looked at the bed. Her arms were like wings, hugged in close to her sides – and if Lelouch had not chosen to look away, he would have had to watch her flap them like two awkward sails as she trembled.

He said, in a low, shaking voice, "C.C., you must know what a bed is for."

"But Master..."

Lelouch finally sighed. C.C. glanced at him fitfully.

The sigh was admittance that something was lost. Something he could not get back. Something he'd taken for granted too long, that he thought he'd never miss, but now he missed it. Terribly.

"But Master, I'm sorry, but this bed is—"

"This bed here is yours. Mine is in another room." He watched her wide, enchanted eyes. "You've— you've slept in mine before, but I won't ask you to tonight."

"Slept with Master? Was it nice?"

Lelouch winced then, instead of sighed.

For once, he was glad she lacked her normal, dirty mind. _This_ C.C. would understand that sleeping meant nothing but shared human comfort. In fact, the old C.C. understood innocent sleeping as well, but she'd never missed a chance to harass him. She called him perverted, made fun of his dreams, and said things about where he put down his hands. He never put them anywhere but away from her exposed skin.

They had started out sharing Lelouch's bed at school. Lelouch had gotten used to that. If he could have chosen his fate differently, he would not have picked C.C. for his bedmate. She hogged the covers and rolled onto his limbs. He'd rather have a lover there, or Nunnally, or no one. But he understood now that with C.C. gone...

Lelouch would give anything to reclaim her. A little seizure tightened up his chest.

They'd made a _contract_ ; C.C. was his witch. She wasn't supposed to go off anywhere.

_The path of kings is one of isolation... But when you said that, did you mean I'd lose you? Why has this happened?_ Lelouch shut his eyes.

_C.C., I just wanted to make you smile._ __  
  
He realized again that to hope was useless. C.C. began to tremble even more. "I... I can sleep with you, if that's what you desire. It's more like what I'm used to; I don't get space to myself. However, th-this bed, Master, is too..."

"Too...?"

"Too fluffy." She backed away.

"Enough. This bed is yours. Get in." And Lelouch pushed her toward the mattress, careful not to touch her anywhere but on the shoulders.

He didn't gripe about where she threw her boots. He couldn't. She tucked them neatly at the bedside.

"One more thing," he whispered, aching. She turned toward him, eyes huge and bright, straining still to keep herself out of the bed. "You may want _this_ , to help you go to sleep." He reached for a lump underneath the pillows, paying no more heed to C.C. as she twitched. Surely this would be a mark of progress.

After a moment, however, Lelouch sighed. Long and low. He couldn't bite it off this time. "C.C.," he told her. "Uncover your eyes."

She did, albeit slowly, like an owl. She yelped when she saw the blob handed her way.

"A-ah!" She cowered. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

He made Cheese-kun touch her gently with a hand. Er, paw. Er… string of yellow cheese.

"You're supposed to hug me," Lelouch murmured, in a voice he hoped sounded mellow and cheesy. "Then I bring you pizza dreams, and you can have a decent sleep." Lelouch was blushing before he was finished. Giving voices to dolls…. This was what he'd come to.

_I hope you'll laugh, C.C., wherever you are._ And then he carefully averted his head, afraid that his expression would jar the C.C. before him.

Lelouch glanced back up at the sound of a giggle. A timid, frightened, and child-like one. A tentative hand reached out toward Cheese-kun, and for half a second, the world was right again.

Lelouch picked up her hand and pressed it in between his fingers. "C.C.," he said, with a rasp he could feel. "I—"His voice came out thick with the lump in his throat.

C.C. flinched backward. "M-master! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry. Please don't be sad."

"Ridiculous. D-don't apologize. You haven't done anything wrong." He nearly laughed. He'd gone too far. Perhaps he too felt muddled and tired. He ought to give her privacy, and take his own, and go to sleep….

He used the sturdy voice of Zero, to call himself back to stark reality. "I'll see you here tomorrow, then. Please tell Sayoko if you need anything." Now was no time to mourn C.C.'s loss, or lose himself in sentimentality. Just because Lelouch finally felt alone did not mean his plans were allowed to all pause.

He'd come this far. He'd seen the World of C, and trapped his wretched father there inside it. He'd lost C.C., and he might never see her smile, but he still had the Black Knights. He would secure the UFN. He could finish Schneizel. Free Kallen. And then—

"Come on, Master." C.C. looked at him, then down at where she'd grabbed his wrist. "You're coming, right? You aren't going away?"

"You don't understand. No, I—"

"You might have bad dreams. I-I don't know 'pizza,' but it sounds better than what's making you weary, Master." C.C. sized up the bed like a threat, and then sat on it anyway. Her hind made a depression. She breathed out and flushed, still tugging Lelouch, firmly but gently. "Master? Is it okay?"

Her lips pressed together, hesitant, yet petulant. She fidgeted upon the squishy mattress.

Lelouch hovered between satisfaction and a quiet, dark despair. Then all at once, despair won out, and he flinched as her words clicked at last into place. "C.C., you don't remember pizza?" He felt too shocked even to drop his face in his free hand.

"Let's pizza dream," C.C. tried again. She happily shuffled backward when he let her lead him forward by the hand.

His knees felt weak as he sank down. "Just this once, you understand?" C.C. backed away, but kept her fingers linked with his. She nodded, and they both lied down.

When the fist around his heart unclenched, and all of his aches seemed like they would subside, C.C. was fast asleep near him – so close her hair caressed his cheek. Lelouch closed his eyes and tried hard not to break. He snuggled into the stuffed cheese that C.C. had nestled in between them.

_To keep you warm, Master_ , she'd said.

That whole night, Lelouch kept their fingers linked.

* * *

Loneliness and desperation took their toll.

Lelouch had always been prepared to be alone. But when he had considered it – collected his Refrain, and braced himself for it quite nicely – he hadn't once imagined isolation in the midst of other people.

It was one thing to confine oneself to solidarity. But to remain surrounded by the Black Knights, to get endless phone calls from Milly and Rivalz, to still have C.C. next to him…? It was a blow that shook Lelouch to his core. His delicate reasoning on the topic felt destroyed. This kind of aloneness made his mask twice as heavy. The weight of his lies made him crave an escape. But he wouldn't touch drugs yet. He could not allow it, even if he was finally sure this was his lowest point.

He had to think of Nunnally.

Nunnally. Lelouch needed to get her back. If he could just secure his little sister…. If he could save her from Schneizel's clutches, from becoming Britannia's tool, then he could have back all his comfort. The bruises on Lelouch's soul would heal. The world could _burn_ , he could lose further friends, but as long as he had Nunnally, Lelouch would feel at perfect peace.

They could live in a box. They could want after food. As long as the world became the kind and gentle place Nunnally wanted, as long as Lelouch could defeat Schneizel's reign… then nothing else mattered but life with his sister. The sister that he wanted safe, right away.

Damn his father Charles for still being alive to mock him.

And it was awful – oh, so bad – that Lelouch had resorted to begging the last person on earth that he wanted to beg. He'd bared himself, to this last-resort person. Before it had come to this, Lelouch had told himself he'd kneel before his _father_ before kneeling for this person.

And yet, Lelouch had made the call.

C.C. had said it, hadn't she. _Friends_. But could Suzaku be called that any more?

Lelouch kicked a pebble, heading to the shrine. Before the stone stopped bouncing, he'd moved to another thought. The trees that broke up the sunlight loomed high, recalling him to his childhood summer. Nunnally back then had been honey-sweet… and so had Suzaku, despite rough outsides.

Yes, rough outsides. So very rough. But now that roughness was _inside_ him as well. The Rounds had made Suzaku marble-hearted. The risk Lelouch took – arriving here today – was one he was still not sure he ought to take.

Except it was for Nunnally. For Nunnally. There was nothing Lelouch wouldn't do, in the end. He'd come here, despite fearing Suzaku's intentions. Suzaku, now armed with the truth, could kill him. Suzaku hated Zero. Hatred wasn't friendship.

Lelouch's gamble rested on almost nothing. Just childhood love and a more recent, sordid pleasure.

They were nothing, weren't they. And yet Lelouch still gambled. He knew but few certainties, meandering down the shady paths.

_He is all I have. He's all I have. The one person I have left – of whom I can ask this favor – is Suzaku. I have to trust him. I just have to, even though it's such a risk. I have no choice now_ but _to trust Suzaku._

_Suzaku is all I have._

And if Suzaku fought with him? Well, perhaps Lelouch might deserve it.

Birds chirped and wind whispered through the trees. A word came to him, sharply.

_Love._

Lelouch stopped, near a knobby tree. His hand reached out to brace against the bark. He felt a tiny crack within him spread, hearing the ghost of Suzaku's words. _I love you_.

Had that love ever been the truth? Did Suzaku love Lelouch now? Had he agreed to help Zero for Nunnally's sake, like he hinted – or in order to kill him?

_Why_ was Suzaku all that Lelouch had? _Why_ was Suzaku the person he wanted to trust?

His phone murmured. He picked it up.

"Where are you?"

"S-Suzaku. I'm on my way." Lelouch could muster no energy to be anything but exasperated. "I'm almost at the stairs. But those are long. I'll take my time."

"You honored the rules, right?"

"No back-up. No weapons. I'm not bugged, and I haven't dressed like Zero."

"Hurry, Lelouch." Suzaku's voice wavered, thick. It rasped with confliction, the way Lelouch felt.

But he'd never show it. Lelouch told Suzaku, "There's no need to rush me. I've given you time. You have it too, don't you? This was your idea."

"Just hurry," Suzaku repeated, like he'd almost fall apart.

That was all. Suzaku hung up. He'd sounded like the wait would drive him mad if his demands weren't honored.

_Welcome to the pits of uncertainty, Suzaku. You and I deserve nothing less._

Lelouch took his hand off the tree and stepped forward, not changing his thoughtful pace. Let Suzaku wait a little more; let him champ at the bit, until all his teeth ached. Lelouch wanted the playing field as close to even as he could make it, despite what he intended to ask.

If the only way to get that was to make Suzaku restless, so be it. If it made Suzaku rougher in the end, he'd take it. Let it happen. Even if his begging made Suzaku hate him more, Lelouch still intended to strip himself bare. It still mattered what Suzaku thought – no matter what occurred between them. Suzaku was part of him, the way his own hair was, or his nails, growing out of control the moment Lelouch tried to neglect him in the slightest.

Why hadn't he cut Suzaku off? Because Suzaku looked down on Refrain? Because sometimes Suzaku seemed to protect him, like Kallen? Because, despite their differences, Lelouch could not let go of the shred of respect he still had for his punisher, his warped lover, his only friend left?

Because maybe Lelouch _needed someone_ to tell him that some things he did were just twisted and wrong.

His heart beat much faster. His pace picked up. Quickly.

_What do you do, when you feel cold inside?_

In the end, why had Lelouch come here? For Nunnally's sake, or only for his own? Because C.C. had made him think about it?

What did loving someone really mean?

Lelouch's phone buzzed yet again. He nearly ignored it, but the ID read, _Suzaku._

He lifted the phone to his ear, feeling crazy.

"There's something else," Suzaku said, while Lelouch stopped short on the path yet again. He listened to the thudding of his heart, certain much more of this would make it rupture. "I want you to leave your phone there, on the stairs. At the _bottom_ of the stairs, and I want you to come without it."

Lelouch licked his lips, not hearing Suzaku's words. What did loving someone mean?

Did it also mean hating? Did it mean hurting, pain? It certainly meant pleasure. Trying endlessly to win that person's positive regard. Did love mean needing someone's deep acknowledgement, their understanding, and the brunt of their attention? Did it mean wanting to learn from them, but wanting to teach, too? Wanting to grow together, turning into better people? Did love mean protecting, or fearing, or fighting? And when did love brush with obsession? Betrayal?

"Are you listening to me, Zero?"

Suzaku never left his mind. Suzaku did not always make him feel safe; Suzaku was the one person who could expose him. The one person able to break Lelouch down. But he still made Lelouch feel desperate to trust him. Suzaku Kururugi _mattered_.

He mattered enough that Lelouch had come now, ready the first time ever to bow. To plead with someone better than him, on his knees, despite that it would crack his pride.

Lelouch wanted Suzaku's forgiveness, despite understanding that he would never, ever have it. Was forgiveness part of love? Did love mean endless compromise?

Did love mean letting someone go, to set them free, if contact just meant poison? What about the way they'd always done such brilliant deeds as a team?

"Lelouch."

He thought he finally understood. _But Shirley_ , he thought, _how on earth is this power?_

He'd never felt so weak in all his life. He coolly held on to his phone. "When all this is over, I want you to love me. I don't want to lose you. You're far too important." Lelouch forced his emotions back. "I hope that you'll love me, and by then, you'll mean it."

Silence stretched over the line. Then, "We are not talking about this now."

"You're right. There's nothing left to talk about. Whether or not _you_ were lying, Suzaku, I can't deny this any more. If there was a moment I thought you should hear it—"

"Leave your phone. Come up. I want to see Zero."

Lelouch did his best not to flinch, but the coldness of Suzaku's tone made him feel like he'd been doused with buckets of ice. His body went rigid before it relaxed, and then Lelouch slowly turned off his cell phone. Suzaku didn't seem to require a goodbye. Suzaku just waited, intent on seeing whether Lelouch would obey him.

It wasn't hard to decide what to do.

Obediently, the way Suzaku wanted, Lelouch placed his cell phone on the bottom step. As he put it down, he also left affection. Suzaku wanted to see Zero, not him. It was best to maintain his distance and his calm. It was best to let Suzaku lead. If there could be no level playing field, then this time, Lelouch was prepared to be disadvantaged. Sometimes people had to fall before they could get up again.

As Lelouch mounted the stairs, his feet feeling heavy, he tried not to be worried that his half-confession had changed nothing at all.

* * *

He'd never imagined Suzaku would physically hurt him in tandem with quashing his pride.

Lelouch had understood Suzaku was furious. He had come prepared to get put in his place. But Suzaku tore at him in such stabbing ways, and then grabbed at him, tossed him…. Suzaku was callous. More heartless and cruel than ever before. Lelouch finally realized the depth of Suzaku's anger. He finally realized how deeply his actions had damaged Suzaku's soul. And so Lelouch took it, like he'd known he would.

But when Lelouch bowed, Suzaku dared to use his shoe, to grind Lelouch's face into the gravel where they'd played.

_Suzaku – pretend now the gravel is lava! You can only walk on the big stepping-stones!_

_That's a stupid game. I don't want to play that._

_Nunnally's wheelchair's the goal. I— uwaaah!_

_Lelouch! Cut that out – you're just going to trip! You stupid Brit, that jump's too far! Don't move; I'll come and grab your hand. Why are you such a weakling, anyway…._

Lelouch had wanted to take Suzaku's steadying, rough hand again. Together, they two could save Nunnally…. But a ringing bullet had then whizzed in between them.

Too much. It was just too much. Right when he'd submitted, right when Lelouch had been about to let himself finally feel – drop himself into Suzaku's arms, murmur his shock, his thanks, apologies – he learned that Suzaku had just set him up. Betrayed him again. Like he had the first time.

Schneizel wheedled at him, smooth. Lelouch's disgust and fury knew no bounds. Suzaku had allowed this! Had planned to let Schneizel discover him!

Thank god for foresight, and one knight's loyalty. Hah, loyalty! Something Suzaku had never, ever had! Guilford yelled, and broke Lelouch loose, and Lelouch looked one last time upon his once-friend.

He ignored Suzaku calling out his name. As Lelouch clung to the Knightmare in the sky, his better sense came back to him. Love?

Love was just a liability.

* * *

Not even an hour had passed. What a wonderfully ironed-out debriefing process the Britannians must have.

Lelouch didn't care. He'd cast feelings aside.

When the device in his pocket buzzed _again_ , Lelouch had already packed his school uniform away. For good, inside the Shinkiro. If he saw it again, he would burn it for sure.

He looked at the caller ID on his replacement cell phone, and he just laughed and laughed. He'd escaped Schneizel's ugly limousine, because Guilford believed Lelouch to be his sister, his tart princess-liege; he hadn't escaped to be followed by this. Lelouch felt heartbroken, more outraged than ever. He hadn't been able to stem the tears that leaked out of his eyes as he soared off, despite that he flicked all his feelings away. Now the one who had made him that way, with betrayal – after everything, _everything!_ – was _calling him?_

He laughed again. Lelouch picked up the cursed call.

"Lelouch," gasped Suzaku, desperately. He hadn't expected Lelouch to answer. After all, wasn't his phone on the shrine stairs? Could Zero have possibly made Guilford fetch it?

"Knight of Seven," answered Lelouch, with no preface. "Or, perhaps, not any more. What new title did you win, for exposing the ironic identity of Zero? Schneizel must be truly pleased. Are you his right hand, after this? Well, my congratulations for your effort. I sincerely hope you're enjoying the role of His Highness's Bicycle. He'll ride you and ride you—"

"Will you start a battle?"

"I'll be finishing one! The time for talk is over!" He snapped it, and then reigned his hot hatred in. Enough. He'd go straight to the center of the Settlement. He started to outline his plans in his head.

"Don't do this, Lelouch. Come meet me again first."

Lelouch felt nothing. Not the slightest skip in heart rate. "Hah, you're so good at feeling guilty, Kururugi. Don't tell me your conscience is pricking at last? Grow up," Lelouch snarled. "This is reaping what you've sown!" The control he had managed snapped.

He slammed his fist in Zero's glove against the doorframe, and somewhere behind him, C.C. yelped and flinched. The door hissed open and Lelouch went out, heading for the Shinkiro with heavy, thunder steps.

He'd already given orders. They were moving.

"Lelouch, none of that was— I swear that I didn't—"

"Shut up!" He very nearly broke his phone.

"You can't endanger all those people! Let's try this again. This time, really alone. I'll give you coordinates. We can make sure—"

"Kururugi! There's something you don't understand! Something you still seem too clueless about. I don't…. I will _never trust you again!"_

Suzaku's voice stayed high, but firm. "Then take a gamble, even though you don't. It's a risk, and Zero's good at those. If I do anything suspicious, if I try to betray you, then just extort me. I can be overpowered if you try. I won't be able to fight back, if I stack the cards in your favor and not mine." His voice finally leveled. "I can give you the advantage. I'll make the meeting place right where I am."

Lelouch's face twisted up. He squeezed his phone. "Next to Schneizel? Don't insult my intelligence. Tempting me into the lion's den is not an advantage, Suzaku Kururugi." But he did not hang up the phone. His mind was ticking, ticking, ticking. Possibly, this was the reason why he'd kept on talking until now.

Why had he kept talking until now?

"As long as we keep anyone on board from knowing, your safety here is guaranteed. My own authority as Knight of Seven is checked on board the Avalon, because I'm in the presence of his highness."

"The Rounds are autonomous! They only report to my father!"

"Your father is allowing Schneizel to do as he likes. Therefore, we all respect Prince Schneizel's current movements. He's ordered Zero to be dealt with in battle. He's hinted nothing, though, about what behavior he might expect if someone were to organize a private rendezvous _instead_ of battle."

"Pointless interpretations! I won't rendezvous with you!"

"Lelouch. I can't benefit by setting you a trap—"

" _Another_ trap, you mean." And afterward he snapped, " _Knight of Seven_." God damn Suzaku's daring.

"—even if that trap _does_ end up in us catching Zero." Suzaku calmly let Lelouch's tart correction slide. "Even if a trap would end in our side finally winning, there's no way _I_ would set it. At this point, there's no honor in it for me. I couldn't use your capture to climb up remaining ranks here. Plus, if I'm discovered speaking to you again without a weapon, then whether I'm with you in order to trap you or not, at this point they'll assume I'm colluding. Everyone knows now just how deep our ties are."

Lelouch paused. He gave Suzaku nothing.

"That aside, I'm telling you – right here is your safest location, Lelouch. Prince Schneizel would never look for you to fight with you in his own fleet. If I'm lying," Suzaku said, "then force me to take you directly to him, for an audience. Make your move before he can recover from the shock of finding you inside the room with him. He's the one you're after, right? Come here, and victory's right in your hands. It's an opportunity you can't afford to waste."

Halfway through Suzaku's presentation, Lelouch began to tremble to his shoes. He waved silent orders for the Shinkiro to launch, choking back the bile in his throat.

When had Suzaku learned to extort people? Learned to so succinctly reason? To speak with the calm and wit of a commander? Worse than that, when had Suzaku thrown away his fear of facing his own disloyal personality?

Before, point out that Suzaku betrayed people, and Suzaku would resist. He would lapse into self-hatred, yet still try to defend himself and his warped actions. Suzaku's concern was always making sure he still sounded like a good, fair person in general. Now, Suzaku not only addressed his own manipulations without sugar-coating them or defending himself… but he also went so far as to present his unfaithful behavior in an argument – to win Lelouch over. To convince _Lelouch!_ It told Lelouch that Suzaku would rely on his own two-faced tactics and hypocrisy to stop him. Suzaku didn't care for his old ideas of morality or heeding rules any more. He would just twist them to his special uses.

Lelouch climbed into the Shinkiro, shaking. Suzaku's damn reason would not draw him in. Lelouch paused long enough to recover, and to give his voice the acid bite it needed.

"Naïve, Suzaku," he laughed into the phone – delivering it loudly, like one of Milly's spells. "Even if you offer to sell out your prince, even if you offer a hundred such dangled carrots, I refuse to fall for it! If I meet you, do you know what I'll do? I'll put a bullet through your temple, so I don't have to hear more poisoned words from the mouth of such a perfect betrayer!"

"Then come. This is your only chance. If you kill me in private, you'll have a significant advantage on the battlefield in the Settlement afterward."

Lelouch's face became torrid and his vocal chords threatened to shred; he worked to choke back a throat-tearing scream.

"If you kill me," Suzaku went on, "it won't even matter anymore that you don't have Kallen."

Lelouch's fuse blew. He yelled. "You heartless, _quisling_ —"

"Fine, then don't kill me. But you can still profit. You can force me to take you to Kallen and free her. Schneizel hasn't set rules on who Kallen has for visitors, so if you threaten me, you could reach her cell and then walk out of here beside her. You'll guarantee yourself a fairer fight, if you do, because you'll have your ace back in action. You can't do very much without her, can you." Suzaku's tone stayed factual, but Lelouch thought the words were smug.

His voice grated like two swords sliding together. "I'll free Kallen whether or not you allow it. Bastard, I'm hanging up this god damned phone—"

"I haven't begged you yet, Lelouch. I could try it. I'm not yet so high up above it."

"Don't call me by my first name ever again! To you, it is _Zero_. Do you understand that?"

"I'm not above begging, Zero, if it will make you listen."

The compliance with the name request infuriated Lelouch even more. A beat followed, in which he booted up Shinkiro's systems. His hands quaked, and he ground his teeth like a mill crushed wheat grains to a powder.

Didn't Suzaku understand that no matter how badly he didn't want a fight, didn't want to see people killed for Lelouch's vengeance, Lelouch wanted this bloody battle and the conclusion to his vengeance more?

"Please," Suzaku strained. "Please give me one last chance. I meant what I said, about making lies the truth. Please come see me, face to face. Don't drag two armies into our—"

"You think that this is all because of you?" Lelouch started laughing again, wildly. At last, Suzaku had cultivated ego! The real kind, big enough to rival his. "You think that you mean anything to me, or to my plans to crush the Settlement, at all?"

Suzaku didn't matter any more. Suzaku should be murdered in his golden Knightmare Frame.

The thought resonated inside his head, along with Suzaku's open invitations. To kill Suzaku, finally, in private…. It was not a bad idea, if only it weren't so naïve and so impossible. The White Knight, at last finished. Imagine the ways Zero would prosper….

But of course, it wasn't so easy. How foolish. Death was where Suzaku's reasoning collapsed.

Suzaku didn't really believe Lelouch would kill him; he was counting on winning Lelouch over with rationality. Suzaku wanted to put them in a temporary truce. And if Suzaku _were_ to begin to believe that Lelouch might kill him? Well. Even that would change nothing whatsoever. Hadn't Lelouch given Suzaku a Geass? Therefore, even if Lelouch faced Suzaku and aimed with a gun that Suzaku couldn't dodge, Suzaku's death would be impossible. It was getting around _that_ that made Suzaku's offers and promises pointless.

Yet, even as he thought it, Lelouch very slowly and quietly smiled. Gears shifted inside his head. He ignored Suzaku's questions and soft pleading on the phone.

They _both_ knew that killing Suzaku was impossible. Suzaku was fully conscious of his Geass and its function. That very knowledge… could be Suzaku's downfall.

If Suzaku thought so damn much about dying, he wouldn't expect something much worse to happen.

Lelouch's grin crawled up his heated cheeks. Yes, if Lelouch could bring Suzaku a fate worse than death…. If Lelouch could render Suzaku so broken that he couldn't function, and if Lelouch could take Suzaku's Knightmare Frame for the Black Knights…. A plan began to form in Lelouch's mind. A meeting on _his_ terms. He'd have to secure it.

_Checkmate, Suzaku_. Lelouch started laughing. His face had become buried deep in his palm.

Suzaku fell instantly, morgue-chamber quiet.

"I'll meet you, Knight of Seven," Lelouch told him. "But Zero will not be accepting your bait. I'll give you thirty minutes' time, and a set of _my_ coordinates instead. If you're still willing to risk everything, you can obey ultimatums this time, and come baring your weaknesses to _me_."

Thirty minutes was more than enough to ensure that Suzaku would never fight again.


	12. Minutes

When History class ended, giving way to lunch, Lelouch asked the question he'd held back all morning.

"How did you get here so fast, anyway? You texted to say you were still with the military. Next thing I know, you're here _early_ for class. There's no way you should have gotten here so swiftly."

Suzaku laughed and scratched his head, and then his laughter cut abruptly off. "Ahahaa—it's just that, well. I kind of cheated transportation."

"What does that mean?" Shirley asked, peaking around Lelouch's shoulder. Her hair drifted against her cheek. "Did you ride here in a Knightmare Frame?"

Her exaggerated voice made it clear she was teasing. Lelouch was glad Shirley had been the quickest to accept Suzaku's presence. Ashford would be nicer with his childhood friend restored to him.

Suzaku winced and examined the benches. Lelouch had trouble reading him, as Suzaku pretended to brush one off to sit on.

"Suzaku works in the information sector," Lelouch said to Shirley. He watched Suzaku tense more in the shoulders. "He's doing research. There are no Knightmare Frames." Did Suzaku dislike being reminded about work at school?

"Well," Suzaku said, with his voice a little strained. "There are definitely none that someone like me can ride in."

Embarrassed from still feeling as if he were out of place, Lelouch decided. Though Shirley was comfortable, Suzaku wasn't. Lelouch would work to fix that soon.

Suzaku plunked down on the bench and then breathed. He patted each side of himself, beckoning to Lelouch and then Shirley. "The others will be down soon, right? I think there's space."

Lelouch watched Shirley skip over and hum at the lunch that Suzaku unboxed after that. He smiled a bit as Suzaku explained, "No. See, it _looks_ good, but were you to taste it…."

"Suzaku. Isn't the military supposed to feed its soldiers better?"

"Lelou, you can't complain at him when today you brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!"

Lelouch rolled his eyes to show grudging assent. He had less time to cook, now that he worked as Zero.

When they were full from eating lunch, and Suzaku had finished Lelouch's proffered sandwich – better by far than a twice-baked potato with pineapple-rosemary-ginger-clam stuffing – Rivalz, who had only just come down, announced that he had a new girl to go woo. Milly, who had also joined lunch late, rolled her eyes and exclaimed that she wanted to have a private talk with Shirley. Rivalz drooped; his attempt at causing jealousy had failed and only created distraction.

Lelouch stole the opportunity to offer Suzaku his thermos of tea next, in place of Suzaku's bright yellow curry milkshake. He asked Suzaku further questions.

"Suzaku, it's a little weird. Can't you give me some details? How did you cheat transportation?"

Flinch. "Er, do you really want to know?"

"I asked, didn't I? Don't just dance around the subject."

"You're even scarier grown up, Lelouch." Suzaku's nervous smile crinkled well-averted eyes.

"I'm sure that you'll get used to it. Nunnally doesn't find me alarming in the slightest."

"A huge, unfair comparison." First Suzaku winced, but then he laughed. Lelouch was learning to appreciate his smile, so different from the scowl on the child samurai. How glad he was, still, that Suzaku hadn't died.

Suzaku said to him, "I came here on a bike."

Lelouch sat back. "A bike?" He blinked. "You don't like bikes. You jump a mile, whenever Rivalz rumbles through here on his."

"Actually, the truth of it is… I like bikes just fine, if they have decent drivers."

Lelouch didn't believe it possible for Suzaku to look more embarrassed than right now. "Ah. I see. Rivalz's driving makes you nervous. Relax. You aren't the only one."

"His bike also isn't made with the best parts."

Lelouch felt his eyebrows rise into his bangs. Rivalz tinkered with his bike constantly, to make sure it ran in the way he wanted. He installed custom parts he said were improvements. "Who can afford nice parts on a student's budget? Are you saying you get better paid to support your hobbies inside the military?"

"No, it's nothing quite like that. I mean, they do pay me, but not to mess around. I'm not saying Rivalz has really cheap parts. I think they're too expensive, and they aren't used to capacity."

Lelouch stared, with his tea up to his lips. Suzaku had handed it back just before. "So what you're saying is… Rivalz is stupid." The hand that supported the tea thermos twitched.

"No!" Suzaku flushed. "No, not at all! I'm saying he could do better if he learned some more, that's all! It's hard to know the right things about bikes."

"But _you_ know," Lelouch exclaimed. "That's what you're saying? There's someone worse at building things than you are, and it's Rivalz?"

The effort of holding his laugh in was torture. Lelouch recalled one very poorly-built tree house.

Suzaku still took Lelouch seriously. "I don't know a lot, but I work with someone savvy. He's let me test this bike before, and just from its performance, I can tell it's good craftsmanship."

Lelouch swallowed his laugh enough to meet Suzaku's gaze. "I'd like a ride."

"You would?" Suzaku's high-pitched tone made Milly and Shirley glance indiscreetly over. The flush had not subsided from his face.

"Of course. I need to judge for myself the level of danger they're putting you in."

Suzaku's expression collapsed instantly. "Is that why? Don't do this again. Ever since I got here, you've been acting like a parent. Can I point out that this whole time, you've been scolding me for danger that I'm never really in?"

"The military is dangerous by nature. Your life doesn't belong to you the moment you become a soldier."

A frown. "Is something wrong with that? Don't you want to live for someone other than yourself?"

Lelouch began to stand and carefully brush off his pants.

Suzaku said, "Of course you do. I think that your life is exactly the same. You give and you give, but don't like to receive. When was the last time you left Nunnally? The last time you did something just for yourself?"

"Suzaku, my sister—"

"You should have some fun. Are you sure you don't want a ride because you already know fun is the cure you might need? Gambling isn't the answer if you're bored and want to play, you know."

Suzaku was teasing him, Lelouch realized. Suzaku stood too – and prodded Lelouch in the chest.

Lelouch found that this time, _he_ flushed. "Hands off me. After school—"

"Yes, I'll take you for a ride."

Suzaku walked off grinning, content to have won, and Lelouch felt a thrill of his own take him hostage.

Class could not end fast enough after that. Lelouch failed at patience, barely listening, his fingers twirling a mechanical pencil. He thought about his Geass. Its secrets. Its limitations that he might need to learn. He thought about what Nunnally would do without his company for dinner. He thought about vivid green eyes, and willed his lectures over that much faster.

Getting to know Suzaku again was like opening up Matryoshka dolls. As soon as he knew one face aptly enough, another would get revealed for him to ponder. Except… Suzaku's faces were earnest and lovely – completely unlike those painted on Matryoshka dolls. He'd seen such dolls when he was a child. Clovis had collected them. Wretched, odd things. Schneizel had always mismatched the collections, so Clovis ran sniveling hard to Cornelia. Cornelia would sneer, and use the dolls as targets…. His mother got mad when she shot them to bits. Lelouch pulled his mind back from prince life, however, so he didn't dwell on the way he'd killed Clovis. Instead, he thought of who he'd _saved_ from that mess. From Britannia's racist, cruel accusations.

Layers and layers of fascinating faces. He wondered how deep Suzaku would let him go.

He wondered, vaguely, looking out the window, why learning about Suzaku made his heart drum in his chest.

Suzaku met Lelouch outside the clubhouse, after the bell rang and the teachers went home. No one could tell them what they couldn't do; the grounds were fair game for non-student vehicles after hours. No one could tell them not to spend all evening riding. No one could tell them to study or train. Nunnally had Sayoko tonight to help her with her math equations.

Lelouch wouldn't admit it, but the freedom was exciting. He'd told Ohgi that Zero would not pick up any calls.

The site of the bike itself set his skin tingling.

"It's completely beautiful."

"Huh? I didn't know you would appreciate design aspects."

"Even if I don't, I can't ignore those perfect lines. It's so… tailored. It's so regal." He ran his hand along the white and gold, while Suzaku tried his best to act like he was not choking on stifled laughter.

"My supervisor named it Guinevere."

"Named for my sister? What a terrible decision."

Tasteless, to title it for the first princess. This machine was more splendid than Guinevere would be even if she _took_ the drugs she'd been prescribed to tame her personality. That ugly tattoo over her left breast, too…. Flowers didn't suit her. But this machine, as white as lilies…. Delicate, and yet durable. Sturdy.

"Named for _literary_ Guinevere." Suzaku smiled, happy to share his knowledge. "Lloyd says this is fit for kings, but any knight would fall in love. They'd try to carry it away, even at risk of destroying their honor." He touched Guinevere's gleaming paint. "I get to test it! I'm the farthest thing there is from a Britannian knight! Can you believe how sleek it looks? I think I'd like it better than a woman…. Ah, but I can't get attached. There's something else that's sort of mine."

"Another test machine? You'd better not—"

"Just specs and research. It's all inter-related— _aaaugh_ , I love these golden handles! Did you see the white-wall tires?"

And Lelouch watched Suzaku swing his jean-clad leg over the leather seat, looking passionate, reckless, and entirely spellbound, as if by intimate experience.

Like he'd lean down and kiss the speedometer. Suzaku muttered something next about how Guinevere felt so refreshing. All it could kill was his desire to pursue human women, not anything else. Should Suzaku be worried? Not like he had time for girls anyway…. Wasn't a bike a much better companion? Things he could say about bikes, he mused, that he could never say about a woman….

Lelouch rolled his eyes. " 'I let my friends ride her.'"

Suzaku said, "That's awful. But I _am_ bad with women. People keep telling me I word my words wrong."

"Word your words? That's why. You need speaking lessons."

Suzaku kept straddling the bike, easily, palming one handle, messing with something near the kickstand.

The engine hadn't started yet. "What are you doing?"

"Just checking it." Suzaku laughed at Lelouch's impatience. He glanced up from under his breeze-tousled bangs. "I have to make sure it's okay, Lelouch, jeez. I left it on the street all day."

"Why wouldn't the bike be fine?" grunted Lelouch. "You obviously care for it."

The tenderness was palpable. Or maybe it just was that Lelouch felt jealous.

"Of course," said Suzaku, avoiding his gaze. He opened the saddlebag without dismounting. "But you have to watch out for vandals, and for thieves. Thieves like bikes; bikes are easy to steal. And everybody saw me getting off. They would know that I'm a student, and expect me to be busy in class."

Lelouch made sense of Suzaku's unwillingness to make the slightest eye contact. "If racist idiots begrudge you this ride, and they're going to try—"

"Take these," Suzaku called. He tossed something to cut the tangent off.

Lelouch caught two items, from luck more than instinct. "Wrist guards?"

"That's right. So that you don't get hurt."

"If I go falling off, then I more think I'd need—" Suzaku tossed the helmet that hung from one handle.

Lelouch caught it awkwardly, still juggling the wrist guards.

Suzaku tisked. "Your arms are bare, too. That's no good."

"I can get a jacket."

"Forget it. Wear mine." He waited to toss it until Lelouch had set the other items down. "Unless you have something inside made of leather. That would be much more protective. Way better."

Lelouch didn't want to go get something leather. He slipped on Suzaku's plain, navy blue jacket. It felt warm inside still with his body heat.

Lelouch, then content, only stood there and scowled at Suzaku.

Suzaku scowled at Lelouch back. "Wear the guards, I'm telling you. If you fall off, the first place you'll brace with is with your hands. That's where shock is taken by your wrists. And yes, the helmet too, Lelouch. I'm not a bad driver, but no one can be too careful."

"No one?" said Lelouch, watching Suzaku toe one pedal. There was a whir. A rumble. A roar. "Not even you?" He yelled over the sound of the she-beast kicking on.

"I don't have protective gear for myself," Suzaku mumbled, feigning fiddling with the gas a little more.

Except Lelouch could read his lips. "Suzaku. Bike riders wear helmets. Don't be stupid."

"I never wear anything!" Suzaku shouted. "That gear is for passengers, so don't feel guilty about being in it."

Suzaku was completely missing the point. Lelouch tore the helmet off his head. He walked forward and crammed it onto Suzaku's instead, and hard enough to make Suzaku wince. Suzaku turned around with hurt plain in his eyes.

"But what about your safety, Lelouch!" He grabbed the helmet straps to pull them off.

Lelouch batted his hands back down. "No, Suzaku. My concern is for yours." The likelihood of Lelouch's injury was low. He'd only be riding the bike this one time. But if Suzaku rode it, over and over…. "You're likely to get killed, the way you do this." There was nothing wrong with endorsing good habits.

They looked at each other for another instant. Suzaku's eyes glowed with something dark, complex. He licked his lips. It seemed the thoughts were private.

"All right," Suzaku said. "I have another helmet." The truth was a wisp dissolving in the bike's exhaust.

Suzaku did not, however, move to get it. And so Lelouch reached out and punched Suzaku's stomach.

Suzaku doubled over, huffing. "Ow," he wheezed. "How did—? Okay!" He fumbled for the saddlebag. "I guess you aren't such a limp noodle. It's nice to know you can defend yourself…."

Lelouch murmured, "I hardly can. I should have first put on those wrist guards. However, I do know how to aim for vitals. Now, in terms of apologizing for making me resort to violence—" But before Lelouch could finish his demands, Suzaku was steering him close, by the waist.

He yelped, but Suzaku kept manhandling him, even as he donned the helmet as promised.

"Straddle it," Suzaku yelled over the roar. "Hold on to my waist, and get real, super close. The tilt of the bike is a bit strange at first. Plus, you're so light, I'm afraid you'll fly off... At least if you do, you'll go into the water!"

"The water?"

"I'm taking us down to the sea!"

Guinevere revved and took off. Lelouch had barely positioned his boots against the footrests before the wind was whipping at his borrowed jacket. His bare arms would have probably gone numb…. He flung himself against Suzaku, clutching at Suzaku's waist. Couldn't the take-off have been less aggressive?

When Lelouch finally opened his eyes back up, he could swear he saw taut shoulders quaking with laughter.

The white bike came alive beneath their legs. The hum and the vibrations sent a pleasant tingle through Lelouch's body. It wasn't long before Lelouch relaxed, letting his hands loosen on Suzaku's waist. When the wind became too strong, he tucked his face into Suzaku's jacket's collar, wondering what the jacket would smell like, if he could smell it instead of the clean and sterile inside of his helmet. Maybe something rustic, sweet.

He began to get used to the dips around turns, and soon, he was craning far out of his seat. He watched trees blur by, and then he gawked at people.

Suzaku handled Guinevere with skill and ease. It appeared effortless, but Lelouch could feel his muscles – Suzaku's core, clenching and bracing – balancing out the distribution of their weight. Suzaku's grip on the handles became tight, when he wanted to add a little extra speed.

He made it look so effortless, but Lelouch knew driving bikes wasn't at all; Suzaku's ability was something he took for granted himself, but that Lelouch appreciated. Mounting a motorcycle was not unlike climbing on a horse, but while Lelouch was good with horses, that was because horses were intelligent like he was. What Lelouch couldn't do, a horse did for itself.

A machine had no brain; it took more to command one. Lelouch laughed. Brainless ride for a brainless Suzaku. He squandered the urge to thump Suzaku on the helmet, loosening up even more as they rode.

"How are you feeling now?" Suzaku yelled. Lelouch made it out underneath the sharp wind. Suzaku turned his head, sizing Lelouch up over his shoulder. "I think you've started having a good time."

"Keep your eyes on the road, where they belong."

Suzaku shrugged and refocused on the straight road. He lifted a hand to press a button near his jaw. "Don't you trust me?" Suzaku asked.

Lelouch heard the query from inside his helmet. Built-in speakers. Of course Suzaku would wait to resort to a _clear_ mode of communication.

"Would I have picked this suicidal mode of transportation if I didn't?"

Suzaku was quiet, after that. Lelouch watched road lines whizzing by.

After a while— "Let's go fast, Lelouch."

"This isn't fast?"

"No. And we're taking a shortcut."

The lush, pruned trees and window-box flowers became cracked telephone poles and engorged crates of garbage. Smiles faded as Guinevere blazed on; instead of gaping in awe and delight, pedestrians spat and gestured when they passed. People's clothes looked dirty. Torn.

Lelouch felt sick. "Why is your shortcut through the Ghetto?"

Suzaku didn't answer him for a long time. He drove, and every so often, he inclined his head. Lelouch didn't know what Suzaku looked at, but the deeper they went, the stiffer Suzaku's control of Guinevere became.

It could have been the barrenness. The hunger.

"People were using Refrain in that alley." Lelouch uttered the words, horrified, forgetting that Suzaku had turned on the speakers.

At long, long last, Suzaku spoke, when they started to see signs pointing them toward the water. "Is this why you said you hate Britannia?"

"This, and much more," Lelouch said, his voice lower.

"I want to change it," Suzaku replied. Tortured. The bike sped up faster. "More than anything—"

"I know." And Lelouch could not bear to hear that Suzaku would do it at his own expense, again.

At least Lelouch had saved him from the gallows. But what if something happened again, and Lelouch did not have a plan to preserve him?

"Are we finally coming to the beach?"

The beach was in much better territory. There wasn't much sea to be seen in the end, in such a built-up Area, but what was still there glittered in the sunset. The red, setting orb of sun kissed cobalt water.

"The timing is perfect," Suzaku murmured, light. "I wanted to get here right as it was setting."

The pain of the Ghetto had drifted behind.

"Suzaku." Lelouch's hindquarters were sore. "Why don't we stop here, if you want to watch the sunset. I'm getting sick of riding, and we still have to go back."

In truth, Suzaku's warmth had become distracting. Odd, to say the least, that they'd spent this much time now pressed physically close. Two men didn't ride like this, together on a bike. Not usually. More normal to be crammed in Rivalz's sidecar.

"Hold out a bit longer," Suzaku told him. He drove to where Lelouch could make out the sand. It formed a strip of empty, chilly beach for two short miles. No people…. But such was the beach's off-season. The sand looked clean enough to use in a sandbox.

And then they drove _onto_ the sand. The shifty, dune-filled parts where bikes were not supposed to go.

"What—!" Lelouch yelled as the bike nearly flew, and the vertical dips started competing with the normal turns. Like riding a malfunctioning roller-coaster. Lelouch clung to Suzaku for his dear life. "How are you driving—? Aah! Stop! Wait, you're _crazy—_ "

"Don't ask how it works! Miss Cécile programmed it! She made Lloyd agree. She said novelties like this are sometimes romantic."

"This sort of a drive would _not_ romance a person!"

He dug his fingers into Suzaku's abs. Solid. Outlined. Suzaku's breathing hitched. Lelouch could hear it echo on the inside of his helmet.

"And by the way, there's no need to test on _me._ I swear, Suzaku, if you don't slow down…."

Suzaku laughed and the bike careened faster – oiled lightning stirring up the calm beach, leaving a storm of grains high in their wake.

By the time Suzaku chose to halt, Lelouch's legs had gone too jellied to dismount. He stayed stuck on the leather seat, gasping. He managed only to yank off his helmet. As he did, he saw Suzaku hop off and twirl around. Suzaku threw _his_ helmet into the sand.

Sand grains wandered into it. He probably wouldn't be wearing it home.

" _Lelouch!_ You have a ton of guts. I can't believe you let me go that fast!"

"I didn't let you, you dumb jock!" Lelouch clutched Guinevere, still shaking. "I just couldn't get the breath enough to demand that you quit driving sooner!"

Suzaku came back, bracing his hands on the bike's seat. He splayed his fingers like he prepared to play a piano.

Their faces were suddenly court-intrigue close. Suzaku's voice went low. Rough. Playful. "You're perfect to take on a ride. You know when to just let someone have his thrills."

"Is the thrill of getting shot at in the army not enough?"

Lelouch leaned away, and back over the seat, to hide the flush Suzaku's nearness had caused. He found himself fighting mild vertigo. He pushed it aside. No doubt the wild ups and downs of reckless driving. Worse than Suzaku accused Rivalz of.

"Maybe I'm just a tad insane," said Suzaku.

"You're more like institutional."

When Lelouch looked up, Suzaku was still there, glowing and breathing too easily for someone who'd just performed those mad maneuvers. It made Lelouch irritated, but he smiled.

Suzaku said, "Isn't sunset _beautiful?_ "

"It's better than your vapid face."

"If Nunnally could hear you hurling insults."

"I've barely started. Despite my cast-off prince status, I'm sure I could still put you in your place."

"You're hurting my feelings, Lelouch. Say something soft. Assure me that, at least if I'm challenged, I still might be somewhat good-looking, okay?"

Lelouch grew hot, still grinning. "You're no such thing."

"Want to ride the bike more, farther down? Collect some seashells?"

And evening progressed that way.

When at last Lelouch returned to Ashford, his weariness was not enough to keep him from the door. He stood behind it, listening, as Suzaku's bike-roar faded down the walk, and then farther, down the dark streets. He turned around only when it became silent, and he became slumped and sleepy, thinking only that there was nothing he would not do if it were to please Suzaku. No length to which Lelouch would not go, to preserve Suzaku Kururugi's smile.

There was no burden Lelouch wouldn't bear. No lie that Lelouch wouldn't suffer to tell. Whatever Lelouch could do – forever, always – was what he _would_ do, to keep Suzaku happy. If there were things that Lelouch couldn't manage, Lelouch would just find a way to make them happen. He'd orchestrate miracles for Suzaku, without stopping for doubts, for ethics, for questions. To do so felt as natural as breathing in air. It felt like looking out for part of himself.

C.C. was waiting for him, on the stairs.

"I think," she said, twirling her locks of green hair, "that the power of Geass has just met its match."

* * *

Lelouch didn't know why he thought of that day, as he stood before Suzaku holding a gun. Maybe the Lancelot's white armor reminded him. Instead, Lelouch should have recalled the first time they aimed at each other on Kamine Island. Yet he recalled that sunset – glinting off the shell of Suzaku's bike. Attraction had been fresh and new, and not yet grim inevitability. It had birthed long before lockers. Long before rainbows.

On that day, words had been like dew upon his lips, and his eyes had been like lenses, capturing Suzaku's splendor – before he'd known splendor could work like a virus. Before he'd known Suzaku would become poison.

"Welcome aboard the Black Knights' vessel, Kururugi, Knight of Seven. How courageous of you not to shrink from disembarking in the lion's den. I trust you'll forgive us your lack of an escort?"

Suzaku knew well enough not to respond.

The truth was, Lelouch couldn't have allowed Suzaku to step off the Lancelot anywhere but here, directly outside Zero's quarters. Suzaku came in from the back hangar, where Zero sometimes kept the Shinkiro to come and go in private. Any other entry point would have allowed Suzaku an advantage.

If an escort had taken Suzaku to him, Suzaku might have given away Zero's identity as they were walking. Such would have hurled the Black Knights into chaos. Additionally, if Suzaku had disembarked inside the main hangar, even if Zero himself took escort duty, Suzaku would have seen too much of the Ikaruga's insides, and possibly passed on the information later.

Lelouch was taking precautions. Lelouch was making a statement. He would not allow Suzaku to steer their impromptu negotiations.

And so they met. Only a few Black Knights watched from down the hall. Lakshata's lab coat rippled, like her smoke. She slouched and whispered something to Tamaki. Lelouch saw no sign of C.C. anywhere.

Good. He'd warned C.C. to keep her distance. He'd given her Cheese-kun and a box of pizza.

All Lelouch's Knights had been forewarned of the meeting, but none were allowed close enough to hear or intervene. Ohgi – first to understand the tilt of Zero's head after Suzaku arrived – turned and left before the rest, to give Zero his privacy. The others followed, realizing with poorly-hidden mumbles and shrugging that negotiations would take place behind closed doors, in Zero's soundproofed quarters.

When the Black Knights had gone, Lelouch still stood there.

He let Suzaku accustom himself to their surroundings. Suzaku's eyes roved him like Zero was new. He took in Lelouch's mask, Lelouch's cape…. His gaze trailed across Lelouch's shoulders, down his chest, and fell on his hips. On the cut of his legs. One the size of his shoes.

Was Suzaku weighing up details he'd noticed before, or ones he'd never noticed and only now kicked himself for? The truth was, it was useless to peruse this Zero outfit. If Suzaku wanted to tell himself he should have known who Zero was from the start, he would need to make comparisons to Zero's first uniform from the Black Rebellion, too. Lelouch had made sure that _this_ outfit was different. Padded better in the shoulders. Cut to make him look broader in the chest. Two pieces – a jacket and pants this time – to distract, and catch the eye with glimmers. He still wore lifts inside his shoes, but the height difference was slightly changed.

Lelouch did not look like Lelouch in either Zero outfit, but more so, this Zero did not look like the first one. Maybe Suzaku was noticing it, growing furious over the games Lelouch played to scramble his appearance.

Maybe Suzaku simply focused his hate. No matter. Lelouch's hate now was the greater.

He uttered, "Kururugi, you will accompany me to my study." He still hadn't lowered his weapon. Suzaku looked at his mask again, and frowned, and slightly cocked his head.

The voice, Lelouch realized. Suzaku analyzed it afresh. Deconstructed it. He finally _listened_.

Lelouch thought, _What I would have given, for you to have listened to me with consideration like that a year ago._ But he banished regrets in favor of his smugness, seeing the flickers cross Suzaku's face.

"I think we should just negotiate here."

Lelouch smiled inside his mask. Less than a minute, and Suzaku already felt out of his element.

"Nonsense," Lelouch answered. "A hallway isn't comfortable. We're meeting for the purpose of diplomacy, are we not? I don't intend to treat you like a hostage."

The way he said _diplomacy_ suggested spikes, chains, blood and other tortures. No harm in ensuring that Suzaku would be petrified.

"I hope," was all Suzaku replied, "that diplomacy isn't a thing we resort to." His stress on the word came out equally black. A familiar deadness crept into his tone. Lelouch sincerely wished to hurl Suzaku into a boiling vat of water.

He walked around behind Suzaku and fixed his gun muzzle on Suzaku's spine. Suzaku allowed Lelouch to do as he pleased, but Lelouch could tell it was not out of fear. He did it for the sake of form, even though Zero was the only person left to watch.

Tch. Did Suzaku think Lelouch cared anymore whether he at least _pretended_ hesitance before a loaded weapon?

"Be kind enough to proceed ahead of me, through the door to your right," Lelouch said, keeping his voice smooth and showing no sign of his wavering frustration.

The door slid open, revealing Zero's suite. They walked around the couches that sandwiched the coffee table, climbed a few stairs, and entered a side door – into a room Lelouch rarely used.

Books and maps lined the walls like wallpaper. A fireplace loomed hollow and dark. The computer on the empty hardwood desk was not lit either. Only a wall sconce cast light from above an enormously wide armchair.

Lelouch had sat on the armchair but once since boarding the Ikaruga. If he had time to spend inside his study, he was making battle plans, or calling in favors – all from in front of his computer, not from in the chair.

He waited until the door closed behind them. Suzaku said nothing, just shifted his feet, squinting in the dimness until Lelouch turned the wall sconce brighter.

The he turned on the overhead lights too, just to make Suzaku look again upon his Zero suit. And possibly to make Suzaku notice at last the aching contrast the suit made beside Suzaku's Ashford clothes. Why had Suzaku so foolishly arrived still wearing those? As if it would make Lelouch less intent on destroying Suzaku's soul!

Lelouch waited for Suzaku to process his position. Alone with Zero. Weaponless, in unfamiliar territory. Nothing lying about could be used to violent advantage. On their way inside, Lelouch had left Zero's gun on a distant table. Now he pressed a button on his desk, and keyed in a code that Suzaku couldn't see. The door made a locking noise.

Trapped there. Together.

Suzaku could still resort to his bare hands, but if Lelouch had anticipated such brutal behavior, he would have already lashed Suzaku in chains. Suzaku realized it too, in the deafening silence – and as if submitting himself at last to the nonviolence real negotiation required, he stood straighter, and forced a looseness to his shoulders.

Lelouch lifted one gloved hand up to his mask, and spoke – in his own voice – the only piece of emotion he'd allow to Suzaku to hear again.

"We would have been perfect together."

Suzaku flinched. Lelouch pushed the button to release the mask so that he could remove it.

He set it down and started taking off his gloves.

Lelouch didn't need to check Suzaku's expression closely. He already knew Suzaku did not like being made to think about Zero _and_ attraction to Lelouch within the same few seconds.

"Suzaku. I'll be straight with you." Lelouch tugged down his inner mask, shook out his bangs, and untied his cravat. "I have no intention of discussing anything."

"L-Lelouch. Before you start—"

"What do you see, Suzaku, when you see me?"

Suzaku fell quiet and licked his lips. Lelouch, discarding his cravat beside his gloves, removed his cape and draped it on the desk chair. Then he unzipped his blue and gold jacket to reveal the lavender-hued dress shirt underneath.

Suzaku's gaze got caught on the detail, on the suggestion of ruffles that marched down the front. He didn't seem to remember the question. He backed up a little, toward the armchair.

Lelouch said, "Kururugi. Pay attention."

"I see Zero," came the instant, harsh response.

It took Suzaku effort to say it. His eyes dragged up from Lelouch's chest. Lelouch had shrugged his jacket sleeves half-off his shoulders, so they draped along his arms.

"You see Zero," Lelouch repeated.

He slowly started separating those lavender buttons. His tight black turtleneck made up the last layer of his clothes beneath.

"And," Lelouch reminded him, "you are not attracted to Zero."

He paused and very saccharinely smiled.

Everything clicked on Suzaku's face at once. Lelouch wasted no time in dropping the smile for a tight-lipped nod of satisfaction. Affirmation.

Yes, Suzaku still loathed the suggestion that he was attracted to Zero whatsoever. It made him want to land another backhand, like the first, when he'd stricken Lelouch without warning. But Suzaku didn't raise a finger this time.

"No you don't," Suzaku said instead. "Don't you dare pull out that card. Just because, always, a part of me wanted—" He cut himself off, choking on his abashment.

_Always._ Earlier that day, hearing it would have made Lelouch want to turn cartwheels. But now the confession meant practically nothing.

Suzaku could feel whatever he wanted. Admit what he wanted. Lelouch wanted nothing but Suzaku's ruin.

Suzaku found his voice again. His body leaned forward, like it too would protest. "You and I have nothing to do with this. Not when you're Zero. It isn't—"

Lelouch burst out laughing, until tears formed at the corners of his eyelashes.

Suzaku flushed and sat down on the armchair. He stopped short of stuffing his face in his hands. It wasn't embarrassment; it was just anger. Lelouch could tell by the rocks of his shoulders. And somehow, for Lelouch, that made it much better.

"Zero and I are the same," he exclaimed, cutting Suzaku's blithering short. "For you and I to try to separate it for a futile, foolish, intimate agenda was a very grave mistake." Suzaku didn't contradict him. "Look me in the eye when I am speaking."

"I know you're the same." Suzaku didn't meet his eye. "But it's—it's different. Don't do this to us." Nothing. Lelouch fed Suzaku back his own silence. "Lelouch. Button up your shirt."

"Why? Is the sight of me loosening my clothes to get comfortable so terribly distracting?" And then Lelouch was on the armchair with him, making use of the moment he'd been waiting for. He straddled Suzaku before Suzaku's mind caught up.

"Lelouch? W-wait. We can't let this—"

Lelouch kissed him. But there wasn't any care.

Suzaku could have fought, but he didn't. He could have beaten Lelouch to a pulp with little effort, but he didn't, and Lelouch had known Suzaku wouldn't. Because this was the way he would break Suzaku down. These were his plans, and Lelouch meant to execute them flawlessly. He pressed his mouth against Suzaku's harder.

This kind of advance would strip away Suzaku's confidence, his composure, his sense of self. This, for Suzaku, would be worse than any other fate Suzaku might imagine or fear more than he imagined or feared the death he still wanted. Yes. Forcing Suzaku to confront that Zero and Lelouch were one in the same, even when it came to undeniable attraction…. Making Suzaku admit that to himself…. The stress would tear Suzaku apart.

Lelouch wanted to watch him tearing. It didn't hurt that in the process, Lelouch would finally get to satisfy a piece of himself, too. As much as Suzaku was dead to him now – and would be buried deeper after this was over – Lelouch would never be able to deny the aesthetic pleasure of green eyes and muscles.

He'd never been stupid. He knew what he liked.

He'd make it better than his lucid dreams.

And so he kissed Suzaku, with one part lust, and two parts domineering cruelty. Lelouch intended to give Suzaku everything Suzaku wanted. If Suzaku wanted punishment from life, Lelouch would be savage with him. If Suzaku wanted gentleness, Lelouch would be gentle – but only once Suzaku yielded. Once he gave in to his attraction.

_Suzaku, let me see you crumble._

Lelouch knew exactly how Suzaku functioned. He knew where Suzaku liked most to be touched. He knew when Suzaku's ego would flare up, or his sense of duty, or justice, or honor. He understood Suzaku's guilt, and Suzaku's guilty urge for pleasure. He had all the tools, from their whirlwind encounters. It had just been a matter of time, until Lelouch could usefully employ them.

Now.

"Mmff—!" Suzaku jerked, with a buck designed to throw Lelouch off. It didn't work. Lelouch ground their hips together. He mouthed the hollow of Suzaku's throat again, that sensitive spot that rendered Suzaku helpless.

Suzaku pulled his head back, sharp. "Wait. I want to _talk_ to you. I want you to act as Zero, but finally do something good, not just keep fighting for such selfish reasons." Suzaku's voice went high and cracked. "I swear, Lelouch, I'll protect Nunnally from all of them if you meet me halfway. Don't do this. Please. Not now. Just make your lies—"

Another kiss. Lelouch pulled hard on Suzaku's hair, until it seemed the roots would rip, until Suzaku's neck could be forced no farther back to meet Lelouch high up above him. The kiss melted into a broken, limp moan from Suzaku, who trembled. His squirming grew weaker. Lelouch seized Suzaku by the collar as they kissed, and yanked the collar open – all the way down, to unveil Suzaku's white-shirted torso. When the kiss finally broke on a low, humming whine, Lelouch was pleased to see that Suzaku was breathing hard.

But he still tried to fight with his eyes and his words.

"We can't do this. I don't want to do these things with Zero. And you're right – the time I could have done these things with _you_ is too long past. There's got to be another way."

Lelouch hardly felt the blow. He slipped a hand under his turtleneck from the bottom. He ran the hand upward along his stomach, with a flair that made Suzaku look down, right as the fabric rode up.

Suzaku's eyes stuck to the pale strip of skin, just above Lelouch's navel. Utterly caught at his waistline. "Lelouch… _._ "

Then, as Lelouch let his shirt fall and roughly undid the buttons on Suzaku's shirt instead – ignoring all protests and pleas and broken begging – something in Suzaku's expression hardened at last, like clay forced inside a brick oven. His features flicked from pained arousal to sharp realization, a split second before curing into stiffness.

Was Suzaku finally realizing that all his words were useless, like trying to saw down a tree with a butter knife? Lelouch wanted to snort, _You're so slow and witless._

Suzaku asked Lelouch one quiet question. "Why?"

"Why what?" Lelouch stayed focused on his task. When the buttons were demolished, he untucked Suzaku's shirt, and cast the tails aside like tissue paper.

He enjoyed forcing Suzaku to use his words, to use his mind, when Suzaku only ached to give in to using his body.

"Why are you making this sexual, at a time when intimacy between us will mean the least it ever has?" The words were hollow, weak, and dusky.

"But Suzaku!" Lelouch feigned incredible shock and pulled back. "Isn't this something you've always desired? Intimacy relieves more stress than negotiating. And in your case, I should think you'd be extra ecstatic. After all," he threw his eyes wide, "you're in _love_ with me, aren't you?"

It killed something in Suzaku completely. Lelouch watched the stars burn out in Suzaku's eyes. Suzaku's hands – that had closed around Lelouch's waist on automatic pilot, just like always – dropped down, and Suzaku's expression fell slain, in favor of a look like outer space – impossibly cold, dark, and empty.

If Suzaku had ever really loved Lelouch, the way he'd confessed that night after the fireworks…. If he had, Lelouch was utterly rejecting and disrespecting that confession now, with his murderous sarcasm. And if Suzaku _hadn't_ ever loved Lelouch – if the confession that time was simply a ploy to manipulate him – then now the tool of love was getting turned around, and used against Suzaku. To strip Suzaku of everything pure, whole, and private.

A blow either way. And Suzaku felt it. Did Suzaku deserve it? For a moment, Lelouch wondered.

Then he fetched out, twirled, and pressed a very familiar button. They'd hit the point Lelouch had been aiming for since he'd sat down on Suzaku's lap.

The computer screen lit. It read, _00:30:00._

_00:29:59. 00:29:58…._

"I said I'd give you thirty minutes."

"Lelouch."

"Go ahead. Convince me that I shouldn't destroy the Tokyo Settlement. Convince me that I shouldn't violate you, and take everything you've never given me, Suzaku. Convince me, while you try to fight this attraction."

"Lelouch—"

"Then you'll know how it feels, Suzaku, to strive for justice just like Zero, but have to battle your emotions to do it. To do something besides following orders so you can deny your heart. If you can beat this, you'll be stronger than he is." Lelouch's voice quavered. He quashed the tremor in an instant. "Then you won't need me, to get what you want. If you can conquer this damnable attraction, this curse that's destroyed us, then I'll simply yield. I won't threaten, and you won't need my help. I'll call off the battle. I'll let you save Nunnally. I'll turn myself over to Schneizel. Schneizel can kill me. My father can do what he wants. If you win, I'll stop being Zero. Forever. I'll even apologize."

Suzaku went still. Yes, the gamble was titanic.

"Try to resist me and everything I stand for, Suzaku, but I'll be playing all my highest cards." Lelouch rose on his knees while Suzaku slightly paled, so the fat chair cushion dipped beneath them. He shrugged his lavender shirt to his elbows like his jacket.

His flawless upper arms caught the light. He hauled Suzaku into another kiss, stifling his laughter against Suzaku's lips.

There was no way Lelouch could lose, because their damned attraction was unbeatable. Unbeatable! Lelouch had simply needed, all this time, to focus on it further. To gamble on it, just like this. To extort it instead of deny it. More than a loophole, their lust had been an _opportunity_.

Suzaku did what he could to reject Lelouch's resolution. But while he rejected the kiss – lips unmoving, sealed like a zip-loc bag – the pressure at his hips as Lelouch shifted and worked himself close took its toll. Lelouch delivered a particular grind that prompted Suzaku to gasp – and then Suzaku started kissing back. Groaning into Lelouch's mouth, gasping, pleading, trying hard to stop and only failing. Lelouch pulled away, satisfied at the pace he'd created at last.

_00:26:47._

"My. That was fast." He dared to palm the bulge in Suzaku's pants. Suzaku snatched his wrist, looking dizzy and serious, but before he could speak, Lelouch added, "I forgot to tell you. If I make you come screaming before time runs out, you give me the Lancelot. It becomes Kallen's."

"You don't have Kallen," Suzaku gasped. He let Lelouch's wrist fall, and Lelouch's hand returned to his erection. "And—" Another attempt to buck him off, that backfired quite beautifully. Suzaku bit his lip and shut his eyes. "And you never play by the rules. Why should I? This isn't a game, Lelouch. People's lives are on the—"

"My mistake." Suzaku opened his eyes again, and Lelouch ratcheted up his smoldering eye contact. "What I meant was that _when_ you come screaming, I'll _take_ the Lancelot while you're still catching your breath, and lock you in here, and you'll have no say in the matter." The coyness left Lelouch completely. He wanted Suzaku to understand that he meant every word.

Suzaku parted his lips to rely, said nothing, and closed them again.

Lelouch, who had settled again on Suzaku's hips, rose on his knees another time to let his pants – rumpled by now – slip down around his thighs when he unclasped them.

Suzaku watched him do it, and it stopped Suzaku's breath.

_00:25:34._

"You're hard, too," said Suzaku. "God. This can't." Suzaku looked at where Lelouch already strained, through silken, thin, black fabric.

Briefs. But Suzaku had long ago guessed. And Suzaku had long ago been piqued by it.

"I am, Suzaku. Despite all that you've done to me, I want you. You see? People walk that balance now and then." He traced a line down Suzaku's chest. He whispered. "I think you're walking it right now. Tell me – how often did you think of tearing off Zero's clothes, just so you could get to me beneath?"

But Lelouch no longer expected an answer. While Suzaku's eyes clouded, he slid the briefs down, using one finger hooked into the smooth, stretchy fabric. Slowly, so slowly he tugged them down – until he was fully revealed, and Suzaku looked in Lelouch's lap like he would faint or simply take him on the floor.

Lost composure didn't even cover it.

"Le-Lelouch. I—mmfgh." Suzaku stifled himself with the back of a wrist, but not before he'd licked his lips and swallowed and let out a wanton sob.

"What do see when you see me, Suzaku?" Lelouch lifted Suzaku's chin. "Am I everything you love to hate, or everything you hate to love? Tell me what I can do for you. Zero is accommodating."

Suzaku glanced at the clock. It read, _00:24:43._

"I w-want you to… _stop_. Lelouch, stop." It was the first time Suzaku had requested it. Stop.

"Really? Ah. Hmn, very well."

A surreal second passed, in which Lelouch retreated. He told himself that Zero, after all, was not a rapist.

The conflict and the shock that splashed Suzaku's face was worth it. Before Lelouch could fully go and take his body heat with him, Suzaku seized him by the hips and dragged him back, unleashing a deep, melodic whine. Lelouch, instantly wracked by his laughter, allowed Suzaku to grab his hands and bring them to the place he swelled beneath his pants.

Suzaku did it flushed, pained, shameless. Like thinking was a function he'd deleted.

Lelouch obliged, before Suzaku could regret his actions. He used both hands to unzip Suzaku's fly, and to release Suzaku from his boxer-briefs. He buried his nose in Suzaku's soft hair near the temple and whispered again – through more dark, low laughter – as Suzaku arched his back and moaned. "Yes, Suzaku. You see? Giving in is fine. There's nothing to be ashamed of. You can't help loving me even when I'm Zero." He slid in close so their erections brushed each other.

Suzaku cinched his eyes so tight it would have taken days to count the wrinkles in his eyelids. Lelouch watched him lose more and more control, fighting back an urge to snicker. "Let me know if I should get the cape."

Suzaku answered in a voice Lelouch found startlingly cogent. "Do that, and I will use diplomacy."

Lelouch concealed his disturbance. "Still no safe word. How about—"

Suzaku snatched both his own erection and Lelouch's fast in hand.

Lelouch hissed, bursting with unexpected need as Suzaku's grip registered upon him, firmly. No, it wasn't time yet to turn focus to himself! This was about Suzaku. _Suzaku's_ breaking point. Suzaku meant to pleasure them together, now, as one?

"Suzaku!" Suzaku began pumping them both, before Lelouch could give further command. "Y-you—!" Lelouch's voice turned hoarse and then fell silent.

Suzaku stroked in slow-motion at first, so that he and Lelouch rubbed together in a ribbon of friction that made Lelouch tremble. He clenched his jaw, unwilling to react. But Suzaku looked down, at the two of them united, pressed together, hot and growing slicker. Suzaku's kiss-moistened lips parted, he started panting, and the sight of Suzaku like that undid Lelouch before Suzaku's rhythm could.

" _Oh_ — _"_ Lelouch lost control of his own precious breath; he buried his hand in Suzaku's hair and held on tight, unconcerned that it was rough. Suzaku added a twist that stroked him just so, and Lelouch cried out again.

And then, before his brain could launch more protest, Lelouch lent his own hand to aid Suzaku's rhythm.

The way they moved in tandem felt like flying over dunes on Guinevere. Again, that vertigo and sense of thrill, with just a little fear he hoped to kill with trust. Lelouch felt so— He felt the way—

Lelouch grew dizzy, very fast. Their two hands, their two members, their two bodies so very close…. He spiraled down, watching Suzaku watching him, watching _both_ of them, rocking into each other's motions, gripping and sliding and stroking out pleasure. Suzaku's hold was confident and fluid, never rough. He followed Lelouch's every jerk and twitch… and when he wasn't fast or hard enough, Lelouch's hand guided him too.

Lelouch was more than willing, now. He rubbed against Suzaku's bare erection, against Suzaku's hand, Suzaku's very desire, and he realized he wouldn't mind if this act lasted a lifetime.

But there was something Lelouch needed to do.

"More, Suzaku," Lelouch commanded, ready again to see Suzaku melt. And yet he still felt like he'd lost some momentum. Lelouch tried to shake his head to clear it, but the heat inside him burned him whole, and made him too helpless to assess his purpose. He latched his hands to Suzaku's jaw, hard, on either side – and kissed Suzaku so the kiss was real, and fraught, and passionate. "Mn—"

He chased Suzaku's tongue, and allowed Suzaku to chase his, until Suzaku's tongue was deep inside his mouth, exploring. Their lips pressed together and danced with each other, until both of them were falling hard into a place where battles didn't happen.

_Beep, beep._

Lelouch started.

Twenty minutes. He had set the beeps to sound every five minutes, starting there, at twenty; he'd assumed that after ten minutes they'd be too lost to want to check the clock by looking. Suzaku pulled away, appearing blurry, messing up the rhythm of his hand on their two members. In a fit of frustration, Lelouch pulled away also.

He moved so that Suzaku's length slipped in between his legs. He rubbed against Suzaku with his hindquarters. Suzaku froze.

"Oh, god, Lelouch—"

Lelouch said, "Yes."

"We can't do this."

"Suzaku. We can."

"I can't. If I do, I'm going to like it."

Lelouch scraped up a pleasure-weakened grin. "Then all the more reason I aim to instigate you." He leaned, so Suzaku's length rubbed on him again, hard and slow. "Don't you want to feel how tight—"

"Cut it out." Suzaku knew what Lelouch wanted. He still could recall the challenge he'd been posed. Lelouch could see the clouds in his green eyes had started clearing. "I won't let us get that far. Because you'll win, and then Lancelot will be—"

How cute. Suzaku had lapsed back into wanting to consider rules, even though he knew Lelouch had set rules he couldn't follow, in a game he couldn't win. Lelouch took Suzaku in hand. He guided Suzaku toward his entrance, and said, "You seem to like the Lancelot. Should we have done this in its cockpit?"

Without bothering to stretch himself open first or fetch the lubricant from his cape pocket, Lelouch slid down on Suzaku, engulfed his tip… and clenched in sharp, prodigious pain.

"Lelouch!"

Concern? Lelouch said, _tch._ He stopped descending.

"Don't mistake me," Lelouch snapped. He didn't want Suzaku's concern. "I'm taking every inch of you." This wasn't an act that required emotions. Only lust. Just carnal lust.

And perhaps a bit more concentration. Tch, Suzaku should have already been blind with yearning. When had Lelouch allowed Suzaku to slip off-track?

Lelouch shut his eyes and willed himself to relax. He'd needed the pain of the sudden intrusion, to recall him to his purpose. He glanced at the clock.

_00:18:49._

"Lelouch…." Suzaku moaned his name, and seemed to do both his best and his worst to prevent instinct from prompting him to thrust upward and deeper in.

"I want this, Suzaku. And you want it too. In fact, why don't I illustrate the latter for you now? Why don't I render you doubly wanton? How long you can last… if you're watching me move?"

Lelouch didn't give Suzaku a chance to register the further challenge. He moved his hips. Suzaku twitched.

Lelouch sank down, engulfed him more. It stretched and burned and wasn't nice, but he took Suzaku to the hilt.

Suzaku said, "This—"

Lelouch said, "Mn—" and then, with mingled sounds, Lelouch was rising again and going down, his arms stretched up above his head. Rocking his hips, as if to imagined beats of music.

Suzaku bit his lower lip, watching with a look entranced – and pained, like striving not to move was worse than admitting his fierce erection and registering what Lelouch was doing now on top of it. Lelouch moved his hips in a tight little rotation, clenching over Suzaku's length and going slowly, slowly up and down. Each stroke became easier, a little less tight and unpleasant.

Lelouch began to focus on the feel of Suzaku filling him. He'd wanted this, for so, so long… but he'd wanted it frequently, so that the act was natural. So that this part could have been left behind – the introduction, the slightly awkward practice.

But it would be fine. The dull pain of reality would keep Lelouch focused. He didn't need mind-melting, hot satisfaction. He wanted to ensure Suzaku's destruction.

Suzaku's hands came up to trace Lelouch's abdomen, to run under his turtleneck and touch Lelouch's skin there. "You're so…."

"What?"

Pain. "Beautiful."

Lelouch felt something in his chest twist at the words. He fought the urge to utter, _You are, too_. "This is me, aroused by taking what I want. What can I give you, Suzaku, that you want? You look like you won't last, if I keep on. Shall I keep going, perhaps a little faster?"

Lelouch told himself to keep playing it slow, but it got harder to breathe when Suzaku shifted on the armchair, inadvertently changing the angle of insertion. Lelouch tipped forward, wracked with sudden pleasure-tingles. He didn't make a sound, but he bit on his tongue. He gripped Suzaku's shoulders. Dipped his forehead against the crown of Suzaku's head.

"Lelouch? I-I'm sorry. That—"

"Don't be." Concern again? "That felt… quite good."

"I hit your prostate."

"Yes, I realized; thank you."

"I'm going to do it again."

Lelouch flinched. "Suzaku. You will sit just as you are." He could not allow such dominate behavior yet.

Suzaku took hold of Lelouch's hips, as if he were testing Lelouch's resolution, his patience. As if, in fact, he didn't really give a damn, and planned to do exactly as he wanted anyway.

_Beep, beep._

Suzaku frowned. Lelouch opened his mouth to say, _Whatever you do to me, you do to Zero,_ but the words had no chance to exit his mouth.

Manipulation stopped being an option. Suzaku thrust up while drawing Lelouch down, and Lelouch stopped conniving. He choked on a moan.

Just like Suzaku had shown perfect instinct and control with his hand, Suzaku showed it as well with his hips. The timing, the pressure…. Suzaku was perfect. For a precious few moments, Lelouch got lost in it.

This was _real_. Their union was real. It thrived now like they themselves did – in real time. The clock marked it, second by second. Lelouch began to feel just pleasure. Losing his edge, his control. Losing, falling—

"Suzaku!" That spot again. Suzaku shifted his grip on Lelouch's hips, and redoubled his efforts smartly. Rising, pressing thick into him, thrusting. The pacing increased to one like a heartbeat. A fine sweat broke across Lelouch's skin. He wanted his clothes off. There wasn't a chance to ask for it. Suzaku murmured Lelouch's name, and in that instant, something happened.

The brunt of registered sensation moved from between his legs to in his chest. Lelouch was stricken deaf and dumb by the force of the feeling, for one heady instant. Heartache and butterflies, both there at once. Suzaku, here, with him. Their connection, both the physical union and something more, flowing through Lelouch like water coursed through channels hidden underground. Lelouch felt _good._ Lelouch felt _right._ Lelouch felt only Suzaku, so tangled in him that he wanted… to cry. To get closer, like what they had already wouldn't ever be enough.

"S-Su— Ah!"

Suzaku clutched him, pulled him close. Whatever jolt Lelouch still felt… he wondered if Suzaku felt it, too. Suzaku's hands had left Lelouch's hips; Suzaku was thrusting still, but his hands threaded through Lelouch's hair instead. There were words. Soft, falling down like snow, and melting on Lelouch like sizzling little kisses. Not at all cold. Heat coalesced in them, and made everything steamy. _Lelouch, Lelouch, it's good, so good. How? This is—! You're beautiful._ Lelouch thought he felt a warm drop on his collarbone. Suzaku's face stayed muffled in his neck, while Lelouch kept arms linked behind Suzaku's shoulders.

Butterflies, ever delicate and vivid. Lelouch sobbed out Suzaku's name as the heightened feeling threatened to ebb. All he wanted, all he wanted was to sink into Suzaku like butter into bread, and melt there, warm, because Suzaku was everything, had always, always been—

And like a fluttering, carefree insect, his feeling of heartache, depth, and intimacy was gone. Suzaku hit that spot again, and Lelouch flew away as well, arching his back, crying out. "Ahn—!"

The carnal parts awoke again, twice as hungry, twice as wanton. Only Suzaku could do this to him. Suzaku, flicking damp, matted bangs out of green eyes. Suzaku seized Lelouch's waist and held on. Pistoned up, and up. So much heat and sliding and hardness.

"Mmn…." Lelouch fisted Suzaku's shirt and clung there. "Suzaku," he murmured, leaning down again for Suzaku's ear, "Suzaku, I'm dizzy. I f-feel—"

"Should I slow down?"

"Don't."

"More?"

"Yes _._ " Lelouch didn't know what he was asking, didn't know what this Suzaku was capable of, outside of his lucid dreams. "Yes." Lelouch asked for it. He trusted, and he held on.

Suzaku slid lower on the armchair, to give his own hips a better range of motion. He tilted Lelouch closer to horizontal, until Lelouch had been laid flush against him. Lelouch wished again he'd had forethought to remove his turtleneck. Imagine, skin to skin….

Then he forgot to relish Suzaku's open shirt, those smooth and dark pert nipples, because the nearness pressed his throbbing erection against Suzaku's chiseled abdomen. Rubbed, in time with Suzaku's thrusting in.

Lelouch sobbed and grabbed Suzaku's hair. " _Yes—"_

"Lelouch, I think you might come first."

He silenced Suzaku with a greedy kiss.

He couldn't sustain the kiss for long. Suzaku began focusing his upward thrusts exactly where he should, to induce perfect, dizzying gratification, and Lelouch soon needed his mouth for more cries. His vertigo grew dangerous. Lost in the scent of Suzaku's sun-tanned skin.

"You can't stand it," Suzaku said, still stroking him, in and out. He sounded husky and surprised. "Was this a joke, Lelouch? You wanted me to fall apart, but what is it you're doing right now? I never liked Zero, but I think Zero probably always—"

" _Hssst!"_ Lelouch forced his hand over Suzaku's mouth, to say _Don't speak, don't hit me with those words_. Lelouch didn't want to hear truths they both knew. He just wanted more of this heat.

More, and harder.

Suzaku took to drawing Lelouch's fingers two at a time inside his mouth. Sucking and licking in time with his thrusts. Lelouch closed his eyes and groaned. Suzaku used the depth and the angle that hitched Lelouch's breath the most, that turned Lelouch's cries into broken, gasping sobs. Tears formed at Lelouch's eyelashes – the gems of pleasure so overwhelming that it turned itself into rapture, into sorrow. Tears of deep relief and release. It felt so good; it felt _so good_.

_No, I can't stand it. But harder, Suzaku. Harder, until my voice goes hoarse, so I'll no longer sting you with my words. Harder so I break and fall apart. Harder so I can't think bitter thoughts, so I can't move, so I can't feel. Do it_ – _until I'm numb again, and dead, but this time from the inside out._

_You have to move, Suzaku. Fuck me. Harder... so this isn't making love. So I won't only love you more._

All he'd wanted was to hate Suzaku. Make it easy. Had it been too much to ask?

Suzaku thrust harder, so Lelouch started yelling. Lelouch dug his fingers into Suzaku so roughly that he wondered if his touch might make bruises bloom everywhere. But this was Suzaku, and Suzaku was strong.

So strong. "Suzaku. Suzaku, I—!"

Suzaku thrust up – in, in, in – and Lelouch began peaking and seeing in spirals. Too much sensation, so hard, so thick… so much ache where he needed release. His fingertips bunched up Suzaku's shirt – fisting, yanking – and he started to come.

And started, and started, until he lost the certainty that he was indeed starting. Lelouch lost his mind, realizing that no, he hadn't yet peaked; Suzaku had simply unlocked higher levels of pleasure than Lelouch had known existed. Levels Lelouch had never felt. And _when_ he came, he'd be… he'd be….

Suzaku quickened the rhythm again, holding Lelouch in place instead of guiding him up and down. The motion-freeze freed Lelouch of responsibility, of the need to take part in mechanics, so he could just pause there… and get closer and closer to coming. In, and in, and friction still so rough and perfect – Lelouch leaned over, one hand knotted in Suzaku's hair, while his mouth let out musical pleas and pants and groans right by Suzaku's ear. _Right there, I'm going to, so hard, I'm— yes, YES Suzaku please don't stop_.

"Suzaku—!" His vocal chords broke on a scream. " _Suzaku_ ," he shouted, voice now overblown and hoarse, "yes, you're perfect, you're making—I-I'm going to, I—" but there was no speaking after that point. Suzaku kept hijacking the pacing, while delivering rhapsodies of satisfaction, working himself as hard as he could against the spot Lelouch felt pleasure, for as long as both of them could take it. He flexed his abdomen against Lelouch's shivering erection, so that Lelouch – all at once – _did_ tip into climax, without Suzaku once taking him in hand.

Lelouch's voice broke on his cry. His every muscle clenched, as he lost touch with reality for seconds upon seconds. All the while, Suzaku kept on thrusting, riding out Lelouch's release until Lelouch's voice cracked more and he was sobbing. Clutching at Suzaku everywhere, slumped across him, barely holding up his own weight as he began spilling against Suzaku's stomach.

Suzaku hit his own release. Lelouch stopped breathing entirely at that, for one amazing white-out second. Then his body shook down to his toes – went wild – as the finish burst forth from both of them in tandem – the fireworks finale, the electric shocks of ecstasy. Suzaku's release filled Lelouch in a rush – thick, warm – and made Lelouch slicker, more sticky and slippery and messy and wet, and Suzaku _kept thrusting_ , more, deeper, until—

Lelouch stopped connecting to time, stopped hearing his own sounds in that second. The climax stretched out, until Suzaku shuddered too, and Lelouch could take no more and all was spilt in pearly streams and Lelouch's skin was thrumming and his nerves were all fire. And then it was over.

No climax had lasted so long in his life. Later, Lelouch would wonder how nobody else had heard them, soundproof metal doors on board be damned. Lelouch slumped like an empty bag across Suzaku's perfect and now perfectly soiled, beautiful body.

A minute passed. He didn't know. Two.

Suzaku at last lifted Lelouch's hips, to pull out. Lelouch surprised himself by twitching slightly and letting slip a still-wanton moan.

Suzaku surprised Lelouch by chuckling. Not only that. It was empty. Without humor.

Lelouch blinked to clear his head, and looked at him.

"I win, I guess," Suzaku intoned. Lelouch could hardly register the words. He thought, though, that they didn't sound satisfied in the slightest. "But I already know you lied."

Lelouch registered Suzaku's meaning at last. Accusation. His brain tried to resurface. Suzaku of the swifter recoveries. Damn him. Instantly back on track, thinking of battle.

In a moment, he'd catch up. Lelouch needed a moment.

"You're still Zero, aren't you," Suzaku said. "You won't turn yourself over to Schneizel whatsoever. Those lies… were all too bold, don't you think, Lelouch? The thing about telling them often is eventually they become unbelievable."

Very calmly, Suzaku slipped out from under him, and climbed his way off the giant armchair. He walked to find the box of tissues Lelouch had left handily perched on a bookshelf.

Lelouch glanced away as Suzaku mopped up. But the sight of it, the aftermath, worked sudden wonders for restoring Lelouch's cognitive function. In another moment, Lelouch felt like himself.

He heard the sound of fabric; Suzaku was tucking his shirt back in. Zipping up his fly.

"What is the code to get out of this room?" Suzaku fastened his Ashford jacket.

Lelouch said, "Suzaku, as if I would tell you. What do you think that you're going to do?"

"I'm not stupid, Lelouch. While we did this here, the Black Knights, somewhere else, were following your orders."

Lelouch covered his eyes with his limp arm and weakly laughed. "Indeed."

Sky trains. Gefjun Disturbers. Every train rode out equipped with devious devices that made Lakshata snicker. They barreled down their assigned tracks, to surround the Settlement in perfectly-timed preparation. All so Zero could push a button and bring the city to its knees. He looked around. Said button had fallen to the carpet.

Of course he hadn't just sat by, and had a lot of rowdy sex. Lelouch wondered exactly when Suzaku had found time to piece it together.

"I'm disappointed," Suzaku told him next. To Lelouch's disinterest, he sounded like he meant it. "I didn't want to fight Zero again. I didn't want to have to go back and explain to Nunnally why an evacuation—"

"Get out," said Lelouch, suddenly, upon the falling of his sister's name.

"You did this yourself, Lelouch. But I intend to keep trying to stop you."

"Get out," Lelouch intoned, as all Suzaku's calm sank in and made Lelouch feel unhinged in comparison.

Suzaku would mock him? After everything they'd both just done! Suzaku had made Lelouch give in, and cry out, and come harder than ever, and Suzaku had come too…. And then had the gall to try to guilt him with his sister.

Lelouch gave up and laughed. He laughed, and realized he was also sobbing. Suzaku finally understood Lelouch's lies and purpose as Zero, but he still didn't agree with them, despite having proposed at the shrine that Zero work with him, together. Suzaku never, ever would endorse Zero's worldviews. Suzaku wouldn't waver. Wouldn't give. He'd always put himself where he'd be in Lelouch's way.

Lelouch had failed at breaking Suzaku, after all that they'd just done. Lelouch had let his face get stepped on at the shrine for absolutely nothing. Called Suzaku here for nothing. Let himself give in to pleasure for nothing.

The computer winked at him.

_00:05:14._

Suzaku looked too, and then back at Lelouch.

Lelouch gave Suzaku the unlock code in a voice that cracked louder than when they'd had sex. He yelled words that he didn't mean. He wished he _could_ mean them. Lelouch wanted to curl up and slumber, to dream all he'd just done away, but instead he swore he'd kill Suzaku at last. He'd fight still, as Zero. He had only Zero.

Suzaku just stared at him, after he plugged in the door code. "If you do kill me," he announced, "make sure you only do it if you're capable of fixing everything you've broken, and of saving Nunnally by yourself."

"I told you already, I can't fix what's already been done! I can't go back in time and change it!"

"Then you didn't listen to me today at all."

Suzaku left, and Lelouch let him.

Yes, Lelouch _had_ listened, and he'd even understood. But he couldn't act by Suzaku's methods. Betrayals aside, Suzaku's theory wouldn't work.

Even if he took Suzaku's hand, and made his lies the truth, and really became justice…. Even if he fixed the world, the one thing that mattered would still never heal.

_The one thing I can never fix is what broke between me and you._


	13. Reasonings

That great white light, that dark black hole of air. All life in the aftermath had just… disintegrated. Vanished.

Nunnally had disappeared in there. In that great crater, like the craters on the moon.

Nunnally. Where was she?

She wasn't there.

He asked everyone. Where was Nunnally? Where? He screeched at Rolo – his sister's pale, dull shadow. Never had Lelouch once cared for Rolo. Never! It was only his beloved sister… his sister….

Lelouch just sat.

He sat. He sat.

Nunnally was….

He wouldn't believe it. And yet, the more he sat—

_Nunnally was…!_

* * *

Lelouch picked himself up only thanks to Kallen.

He'd seen her in battle and heard her loud voice, but knowing she was back was not enough; he came to life again when he finally saw her face. She came – once Lelouch had hollered Rolo from the room – while C.C. was still cowering.

"Master? Please take your clothes off! I-I'll—"

Something about Kallen's affronted flush made Lelouch determined not to let her think he and C.C. were having sex.

He realized Kallen never changed. Despite the situation, she reacted like herself. Something about her solidity brought Lelouch back to his senses, despite his knowing Nunnally was dead.

Dead. He felt a little sick inside, knowing that he lived and felt, when his sister no longer existed. But… Lelouch was happy to see Kallen.

He told Kallen how much he had missed her, while they were in the elevator. They were headed toward the others, because Zero had been summoned.

Kallen, with her shoulders back and eyes ahead, murmured to him, "I missed you too, Zero. It's an honor to be back."

He wished that Kallen realized he was saying it more as Lelouch, but he couldn't find the words. He tried again. "It's good you made it back. I'm sorry it took so long to send help." He tried, but couldn't delve in to particular emotions, because Kallen seemed to want to express something else.

Kallen said she'd talked with Nunnally.

Lelouch, instead of tremble and fall down, listened as Kallen started to share stories about her own sibling's death. He imagined how Nunnally and Kallen must have spoken. Nunnally would have smiled, when she found out Kallen wasn't so demure. Lelouch wanted to tell Kallen, _Thank you for trying to make me feel better. I'm sure that you're the only one who can. But please, don't talk about it any more—_

The lights went on. Spotlights that tried to melt him.

After that, Lelouch's only thoughts consisted of preserving Kallen, and of possibly taking Schneizel down with him.

"Answer me, Lelouch," said Kallen. "What am I to you?"

He lied. He showed them all his face. And what harm in so doing, now? Lelouch thought, perhaps, yes – he ought to be killed. Should he be gunned down, he wouldn't make further mistakes. He wouldn't have to think about how he'd lost Nunnally, and how the words he spoke right now were disappointing Kallen. Indeed, Lelouch would _relish_ dying.

He did not deserve to live.

He thought, _Suzaku, I understand you now._

But regrets for one sibling made way for another, as Rolo swooped in and then forcibly saved him.

The Shinkiro zipped through the sky; the wind cut Lelouch and the metal of the Knightmare frame entrapped him. He only thought, _There's nothing left! Don't save me, Rolo! I'm done living! I don't want to have to keep struggling. I don't want to have to live without my sister._

"Stop doing this, Rolo!" he finally shouted, when he realized that he couldn't rip himself free. He climbed inside, when Rolo opened the cockpit. "Why are you trying to save me? I was only using you!"

Lelouch needed Rolo to recall that Lelouch didn't love him. He needed Rolo to think about himself. Lelouch was finished living.

"Don't use your Geass! Do you want to die?!"

Rolo needed to be bullied into leaving Lelouch alone and defenseless. Lelouch resented having to put forth such effort to lead him, at a time like this – but when Rolo landed them, and laid down his head… Lelouch realized something, as Rolo sat dying.

He let Rolo believe what he wanted, by small way of thanks. Rolo had, perhaps, in the end, become exactly the sibling he'd been manipulated into emulating. Perhaps Rolo had understood what Lelouch only now realized for himself.

There was something Lelouch needed to finish. He had no right to die here. None.

Lelouch had lost Shirley, Nunnally, control of the Black Knights, and now Kallen's trust, but that was rightful punishment. Why had he allowed such awful deeds to come to fruition in the first place? He'd forgotten one of his initial reasons for his bloodshed.

Lelouch needed to destroy the man who had failed to hunt down Marianne's killer. If Lelouch was on the path to Hell, he intended to drag his damned father down with him.

He started a rebellion over Kamine Island. He Geassed whoever he made contact with – and killed, until the Knights of the Round came to attack each other in confusion.

_My name is Lelouch vi Britannia, eldest son of Empress Marianne. The prince who was abandoned by his empire._

Explosions bloomed. Chaos ignited.

_If anyone wishes to stop me, let them try – if there are any whose despair can match my own._

He headed for the door into C's World. He stuck bombs around its outside.

Let Charles vi Britannia free himself from _that_. As for Lelouch? He would stay trapped there too. Only then would his work be completed. It didn't even matter if he got stuck there forever.

No one, no one in _this_ world could match his sadness – and when he'd challenged anyone to try, Lelouch had known that only he could ensure none of his father's evil would taint lives again.

When Lelouch faced his father, he learned the whole truth. His mind got turned upside-down again.

Yet… what kind of parents abandoned their children? Whatever Charles's truth, there was no justifying that.

It didn't surprise Lelouch when Suzaku and C.C. entered C's World to join him. Neither did it phase him that C.C.'s memories had been restored. A climax, after all, needed to have all its main players.

If Lelouch had been any less livid – if he'd been any weaker than he was right then – he might have broken down again, and fallen either into C.C.'s arms or on Suzaku's sword. Instead, Lelouch turned around and said, "What do you two think of all this?"

Suzaku and C.C. stood with him. For once, Lelouch felt truly strong.

He looked at his parents, then up in the air – and made a very clear request. No matter what, time should keep moving forward.

What Lelouch wanted was tomorrow.

When everything was said and done, when Charles and Marianne had disappeared, Lelouch was left staring at that tomorrow – through the windows of green hair and sharp green eyes. Jungles.

"C.C.," he asked his witch, a little coldly, "are you going too?" Into the Unconsciousness.

She could – if she still wished – just disappear. Vanish.

She said to him, "You ought to at least smile when you die."

Lelouch decided he'd let her behavior slide, because it showed him that she really cared.

Yes. In the end, C.C. was his accomplice. His witch. But what of Suzaku, who'd come here so changed? What now, that they had picked the forward march of time?

"Yes," said Suzaku. "Lelouch murdered Euphy."

"And so?"

Suzaku lowered his sword. Lelouch looked at him, feeling the tingle in his second Geass eye.

They milled there, the triumvirate responsible now for the fate of their world. C.C. got up. Suzaku cleared his throat. He couldn't meet Lelouch's eyes.

Without a word, C.C. strode off, and Lelouch knew that she would be waiting outside.

Lelouch knew that she would keep living.

"And so?" Lelouch then repeated, more softly.

He stood before Suzaku, unmoving. Every cell of him became aware of Suzaku's regard. Suzaku was deciding what kind of tumor Lelouch had been. Had Lelouch been entirely malignant? Should he be cut out? Or had he been mostly benign? Would Suzaku simply choose to keep an eye on him from this point on?

Suzaku let his sword fall. "Shirley told me something, on the day she died."

Lelouch blinked but didn't look away.

"She told me there is nothing that is unforgiveable. She said that I just didn't want to forgive."

"Forgiveness," Lelouch said mildly, "clemency, pardon… mercy is an option rarely considered by people as accustomed to violence as we are. Wouldn't you rather destroy an unfitting emperor, than forgive all his sins and let him continue to thrive?"

He looked at the spot where his parents had faded. Suzaku did too, as if considering.

"Don't burden yourself with more than you need to. Shirley was one of a kind in her mercy; it would be a strain to live up to her level. She's gone. Now the world can focus on the future. People—"

"No." Suzaku cut him off. "I don't want to spend my future feeling this way about me and you."

Lelouch's heart rate quickly climbed. "But surely," he said, "you can't pardon my sins."

Suzaku didn't answer him. Lelouch began to hope he'd helped Suzaku settle on _malignant_.

For after all, punishment was what Lelouch still craved. Just because Lelouch had beaten his father… just because he'd given the world a future… didn't mean Lelouch himself still had a future to proceed to.

Lelouch had saved the world, but he still just wanted to die.

Suzaku took a short step to one side. "Resentment," he said, "hatred, disrespect…. It's your fault I feel those, whether I know yet if I'll forgive you for them or not. Feelings like those are poison in my heart. I don't want to feel them, and be disappointed in all this, for years and years to come until I die."

Lelouch's lips parted. He stood thunderstricken. "You defended your existence."

Imagine, Suzaku doing so. Admitting aloud that he'd be living on.

"Yes, I did," Suzaku told him. "How can I pretend now that I have another choice? I fired FLEIJA. I killed Nunnally. It happened because I'd decided to die. If I don't try now on my own to survive, the Geass will react. Those around me will all get destroyed."

"Then, what you have isn't will to survive."

"No. It's an acceptance of responsibility." Suzaku's face crumpled, but he attempted to smooth his features back out. "It's a job."

Lelouch had failed at yet another pursuit.

Lelouch gave Suzaku a dry, bitter smile. "What price would you have me pay?" he asked. "At what price can I pay for repairs, and buy the forgiveness of you and the world?"

He already knew that the answer was, _None._

Suzaku's scowl confirmed it. What Lelouch had wrecked was priceless. Only Lelouch's timely death, right here—

And yet Suzaku said, "Come up with a plan."

"Hah. Suzaku, far easier to end things now. Pick up your sword." Lelouch said it in sharpened tones. "You want me to atone, to make your job more hassle-free? Then slide that blade across my throat, and – jealous as it makes you – end a life that's not deserved."

Lelouch expected anger – great explosions born of insult. But Suzaku told him calmly, "No. It wouldn't benefit the world."

The statement made it impossible for Lelouch to speak.

"And that's what I think you should do," Suzaku finished. "Benefit the world, before you're just allowed to rest."

"Benefit the world?" said Lelouch brokenly. "But how?" Suzaku didn't answer him. "You're asking me to fix this mess?"

Lelouch smiled again, but grimly. Of course someone else he had wronged thought there were things he hadn't finished. He thought of Rolo saving him. Of Kallen. _Lelouch, but what am I to you?_ Yet no semblance of plan that Lelouch could create would answer such questions, or enable Lelouch to repay the whole world.

Except for one. Lelouch still believed it. But according to Suzaku, he could only die if it were useful to the world. His death was not allowed to be considered plain escapist.

He hated Suzaku's ever-clinging sense of honor, duty. Did Suzaku actually realize what he was asking of Lelouch? What he suggested? Suzaku left him only one precise route of repentance. And that route would most likely have to depend on Suzaku for judgment and orchestration. Was Suzaku only speaking out of weariness, frustration?

Lelouch didn't want to think about how he'd work out the details. If he had just one option, and that option was a compromise with Suzaku….

Lelouch pulled himself together.

"Will you help me turn it all around?"

He didn't dare pretend that he could do it on his own. _Trust me_ , he urged silently, _so we can mend the world and finally rest._

Suzaku did a peculiar thing.

He picked up the sword he had dropped – by the hilt – but then flipped it up high so it arced through the air. With wide eyes, Lelouch watched Suzaku next catch it – by the blade, so the handle extended straight outward. "I'll spill whatever blood I need to – even my own – for that very result."

Lelouch, placated, reached out to lift the proffered weapon. Suzaku's hand wasn't bleeding – the gloves of his uniform guarded his palms – but the display felt deeply symbolic.

Lelouch sensed the weight of Suzaku's formality as he raised the sword up to regard it. The act of holding it aloft gave him the workings of a plan. A plan… to provide both himself and Suzaku with the punishments each of them wanted.

He had, after all, just killed the 98th emperor. If Lelouch considered what such murder signified, on the scale of succession….

Lelouch very regally lowered the weapon, that much more determined and certain. "Then Suzaku, rely on me to restore this world to justice, and to orchestrate a punishment befitting of us both." Suzaku didn't speak or move. Lelouch added, "No matter what it costs."

Suzaku left the World of C beside him. "Rely on me to make sure that you do."

* * *

Baghdad. An insect buzzed, dipped, and caught the breeze. The weather outside was a little too hot.

"It's best if we keep hiding here for a month."

Lelouch relished the warmth of the coffee mug he held between his hands despite the torrid air. The coffee – bitter, very darkly brewed – was much like the look Suzaku focused on him. Lelouch went on, heedless of Suzaku's expression.

"From here, our perspective is broader, not blind. We'll make sure we see everything that goes on in the lesser Areas – and direct it to suit our purpose."

"Not a bad idea," C.C. murmured, "After all, you'll have to command the whole world like that if you win. You may as well start the chess game."

"Yes," said Lelouch, and he smiled wryly, tracing the board he had laid out before them. "It's never too early to make the first move. But C.C., I'm a bit surprised."

"That I came along?" Her mouth pressed against Cheese-kun.

"That you think there's a chance Suzaku and I might not win." He made sure to look only at C.C. when he expressed it.

The confidence, the indirect praise, did nothing to soften Suzaku's expression; Lelouch didn't _have_ to look, in the end, to sense Suzaku's displeasure with him. Suzaku felt too chilly for the baking coffee house.

Baghdad. The place Britannia, the UFN, and the EU still hadn't touched. How many days had they rolled out of bed and come back to this shop, to lay out all their plans?

Lelouch suddenly wished he'd left a few people inside to bring more coffee. Instead, he'd banned even the barista. It wasn't as if he had Sayoko to do it…. He could have used another, stronger cup of coffee to help him concentrate. The sun made Suzaku's green eyes look absolutely stunning.

Lelouch decided he'd look if he wanted. Even if Suzaku hated him, and never once reciprocated Lelouch's brief glances, what could stop Lelouch now from admiring whatever he desired? And so, he met Suzaku's gaze dead on, allowing a self-satisfied smirk to grace his lips.

It prickled Suzaku that much more.

"What about the people in the Settlement?" Suzaku asked him. "You're still just going to leave them unaware? Suppose they finally realize they no longer have an emperor? Area 11 will riot faster than anywhere else in the world – and then, the place we're most trying to protect—"

"Do you not trust your supervisors to handle the situation there at present?"

Suzaku hadn't touched his dainty plate of figs and cream, but he bluntly gripped his spoon as if he meant to bend it backward. "They have no idea where any of us went. Earl Asplund is smart, and Cécile Croomy even smarter, but they alone can't handle massive uproar."

"That's what I left Jeremiah there for. The rest will learn when time is right." Lelouch again regretted losing his housemaid in the FLEIJA blast. She would have been useful as well. "Don't worry about your superiors, Suzaku. In fact, they're not superior any more. When we return, they'll fall under our command, and if you're worried for their mental states, I can easily erase the autonomy you feel might be creating all their stress."

Suzaku's spoon clattered against his plate.

Lelouch steepled his hands beneath his chin, fully aware of what he'd just implied. Suzaku appeared like he'd been backhanded, and didn't know whether to fight back at breakfast. C.C. sighed, stood up, and went to stand beneath a ceiling fan, airing out her long, curtainous hair.

Suzaku slammed his fist onto the table. "I get it. All right. You're just trying my patience."

"Oh? You insisted on trying mine first."

"Stop it. I want their immunity from Geass. Promise me that they can have it, Lelouch. I won't let you warp anyone else important—"

"Anyone important?" He remained perfectly calm. "Is that not slightly biased? _You_ deciding who's important? Besides, I thought Geass was wrong under all circumstances, according—"

"You already plan to subdue Kaguya, if the UFN doesn't allow you to join them! Whatever you want, I'll just _ask_ them to give it. There's no need to puppeteer them like they're robots."

Lelouch's gaze became predatory. "Can you guarantee they'll obey my commands?"

If not, then Suzaku would have to use pressure. And pressure was no different than Lelouch's Geass.

"I won't let you do it," was all Suzaku told him.

Lelouch willed calm into his fingers, so they didn't quake upon the table. Why was it always a matter of time, before Suzaku upset his delicate balance?

Lelouch made sure his voice came low. If Suzaku was going to regress into a stubborn wooden creature on the topic, there was nothing left Lelouch could offer. He'd just address a different matter.

"There's something we should talk about, Suzaku Kururugi."

C.C. shot Lelouch a melancholy gaze from underneath the fan, as if to ask him, _Do you have to do this now?_ Lelouch didn't acknowledge her. If this was the right time to break Suzaku in….

C.C. understood. "Well, I'm going outside. It's been a long time since I've tried for a tan."

"C.C.," Suzaku warned her, rising. He'd realized that she meant to leave him purposely there, with Lelouch.

He made as if to snag her by the arm. C.C. did something Lelouch didn't expect.

"Kururugi." Her voice froze them both. She sounded like the woman who'd once asked Lelouch why snow was white. "How is it you're still so dim? Your will…. It no longer belongs to you. The moment you accepted Lelouch's truth inside the World of C, you again received a Geass. What are you now, if not Lelouch's chess piece? Pieces on the board should do exactly as directed."

Lelouch kept his mouth tucked behind his hands. He did not even look his coffee in the eye.

Suzaku's anger sloughed off him in waves. Lelouch was shocked the perspiration didn't turn to steam. "I know that I agreed to this," he said. "But my being here is an agreement of itself. I'll work with Lelouch, but he should also work with me. I'm not just his white knight. Lelouch and I, we're—"

_Equals._

Lelouch filled it in, while Suzaku only struggled. _We are two very conflicting equals._

"When you break someone's heart, there is no compromise – and twice none when _you choose_ to repent for the break by giving yourself as a punching bag to the person you broke. And all because you loathe yourself! You really are a funny one, sir masochist soldier."

Suzaku took an uneven step backward. Something warped his features. Memories, perhaps, of poisoned love.

"C.C.," Lelouch whispered in soft reproach. But she only smiled, drifting toward the exit.

Lelouch decided to leave her alone. Yes, she knew the reference to their shattered intimacy cut Lelouch as well, but she had done Lelouch a favor. She'd ground Suzaku down _for_ him.

Now Lelouch wasn't required to do so. Their talk would be strained, but not painful. He was grateful.

C.C. left them quite alone.

"Suzaku," Lelouch began, when both of them had finally recovered. He waited for Suzaku to sit back down. "I'm going to become the Emperor."

"I know that," Suzaku muttered.

Ah. Still reeling.

"It only makes sense. What else _can_ you do, after killing your father? You'll take responsibility." Suzaku paused. "And I will, too. Is that all you had to tell me?"

"All that, yes, but C.C. is also right. We'll be working together from this point onward, and closer than we ever have before. This is nothing like a school festival. My goals and your goals for the world are the same, and we need to admit now what such a thing means."

They were like a divorcing couple, Lelouch thought. Inside the courthouse, they strove for the same goal, yet were unable to resist taking petty stabs at one another.

Working together under a grudge would get them nowhere. They needed to agree to disagree only when it was harmless, or just—

"No, Lelouch. I don't have to work beside you. I'm just here to learn what you aim to do next."

"You still fancy yourself my watchdog. You're going back on your agreement to help me improve things?"

Suzaku didn't deny it. "After we leave Baghdad, I'll move forward alone, on the condition that this time, I won't actively be trying to oppose you. With separate-but-connected methods, things will move much faster – like catching them in a pincher movement." What he didn't say out loud seemed to be, _Damn it, I won't be your piece to maneuver. Just because I want what you do doesn't mean I have to do it_ your _way._

Lelouch wanted to stress again that he viewed them as equals. But Suzaku in this state would dismiss him and not believe it.

Lelouch kept his voice very calm. "I won't allow you to distance yourself. I need you. There's nothing we can't do together."

"You don't need me to help checkmate Prince—to help checkmate Schneizel. You did enough winning and fighting before. Use Geass, to get who you need on your side." Suzaku folded his arms and leaned backward.

"You really are so hypocritical."

Suzaku still refused to touch his plate of figs.

"Eat," Lelouch ordered, keen on changing the subject.

Suzaku pushed his plate away.

Lelouch got up and swiped Suzaku's spoon, intent on force-feeding Suzaku if needed. He scooped up a lump of figs like shoveling loam, leaning across Suzaku to get the glob beside his mouth. Suzaku brusquely snatched Lelouch's wrist, to prevent the meal from adding to their confrontation.

Or from staining both their outfits. They struggled a moment before falling still, after a plump fig had met Suzaku's napkin.

Suzaku's warm, well-worn fingers let him go. Lelouch intoned, as Suzaku fiddled with his teacup – on the cusp of either snapping something else or delivering apologies – "I plan to make you my knight, Suzaku."

Suzaku – who had finally sipped his tea, if not agreed to eat a morsel – choked. He clinked the cup back down. "You can't," he uttered. He repeated it. "No."

"Can't I?" Lelouch was tempted to force Suzaku's chin upward. Instead, he kept his arms by his sides, willing himself not to get hot and angry. Two angry people would solve not a thing. "Don't I have command out here? Can you argue with C.C.'s analysis? She's right, Suzaku. There's no compromise. There is no longer any turning back, for either of us."

The only way to mend the world was with the two of them together, no matter how torn their relationship was. Lelouch would absolutely keep Suzaku there for that purpose. He would keep Suzaku always at his side.

"I don't think I could kneel for you," Suzaku said, matter-of-fact. Lelouch wanted instantly to slap him. "A personal knight requires deep respect. Forgiveness, even. Things you seemed inclined like me to think we'll never have, Lelouch."

"You told me that living now is nothing but a job. Because you cannot die, you feel you can't atone for everything you've done. But I've found you a way around the labyrinth of repentance. I can offer you your absolution, Suzaku. Your retribution. Imagine – a lifetime of it. Would you turn down the chance at that?" He'd been thinking of it, ever since they left C's World. He whispered. "Would you turn down the chance of forcing my penance on me?"

Suzaku went stiff. He avoided the question. "You can't make me your slave. I'm already Geassed."

"I'm not asking you to become someone servile, no matter what C.C. has suggested. I want to make you my sword." Lelouch paused. "My willing and freethinking one."

The ceiling fan twirled lazily around. Suzaku's fingers stayed tense on his cup. Then they tightened and loosened. His lips wandered downward.

"Lelouch. Is this the only way?"

"I've ruled out everything else. I've thought it through, Suzaku. Over and over." Lelouch's voice was hoarse. Suzaku glanced at the chessboard. "Suzaku, if there were a way to convince you—"

"You two? I hope your heart to heart is over," C.C. slipped back in through the café door. "I've just learned that our informant was really one of Schneizel's."

Suzaku stood, with a sigh like a wind. It sounded as weary as Lelouch felt. Suzaku fingered his sword, as Lelouch donned his jacket. "A shame we couldn't stay for further coffee." But in truth, Lelouch was glad to change their scenery.

They went outside, and Suzaku said, "Did you have to kill him, C.C.?"

Their time in Baghdad went like that. Plotting, moving, keeping their heads down. Everywhere they went, Lelouch left one long trail of Geass, turning over countries, rooting up secret informers. Enhancing support for the UFN's methods. It wasn't enough to make dents against Schneizel, and it wouldn't be, until they could move much further; the only way to beat Schneizel was head on, against Schneizel's forces and the Black Knights. Lelouch could only do preparatory work, until he felt truly equipped for that.

Lelouch could not afford to fail. He kept an eye always on Area 11, trusting in his contacts there, plodding on, and laying trails. Some days, he felt he had complete control.

Then he would look at Suzaku, and recall control was relative.

* * *

One hot night, after twenty days had passed, Suzaku came to him – while Lelouch sat in his bedchamber.

Blood made three bright ruby gems on Suzaku's face.

"It's finished," Suzaku told him. He flicked the blood off the knife he had carried. "I didn't like killing so many of them."

"Of course you didn't," Lelouch answered, from his chair at the desk where he was working. He paused. "How come they all had to die?"

"They didn't listen. It couldn't be helped. If they'd just done what C.C. suggested to them—"

"They shot at you instead. They got angry. You had no choice but to defend yourself."

"Because it would have been worse if I'd let them overwhelm me. Because in the end, I've agreed to support your plans." Either way, Suzaku added to his list of sins.

Lelouch wondered what had become of Suzaku's sword, but only vaguely, as he became distracted. The sight of a conflicted, post-battle Suzaku both froze up and heated him.

"Thank you for your hard work and the sacrifice," Lelouch said shortly.

"I want to confirm something," Suzaku muttered.

"What's that?"

"Whether you're aware your forces out here are incapable."

Lelouch answered tersely, refraining from wetting his lips. "I'm aware of no such thing, Suzaku. I would assume my forces are as good as their commander." Suzaku, looking rough and violent, made his throat go oddly dry. Lelouch turned back to his needle and thread, stitching at the prototype of his emperor outfit. He slid his chair away from Suzaku and all the blood. "I'm the best tactician that exists. If I'm not enough, then I don't know who is."

"Xing-ke," said Suzaku. Lelouch looked up. Suzaku said, "Sorry."

Lelouch pursed his lips. Suzaku shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "But that's not what I meant." Suzaku tried again. "Isn't it obvious? You've Geassed everyone to work like a pawn. They don't have a shred of independence left."

"A fine point to pick on, coming from a soldier, never mind a soldier as strict as yourself. Geass aside, what good are men that might not follow orders?" Lelouch tried not to grow frustrated.

"You aren't a god, Lelouch," Suzaku said.

Gods versus kings again? So much like Charles. For a moment, Lelouch resented everything Suzaku had become while serving Britannia.

"Sometimes, one soldier's quick decision is the difference between victory and defeat. The commander can never know everything, and that's when individual choice comes into play. If they don't have options, they're going to lose."

Lelouch put his sewing down. "Indeed. I see now why you were promoted to the Rounds."

"I sold you to do that," Suzaku intoned. "That's the only reason I got in. Don't try to warp the real truth of it now. It's pointless to pay me a compliment. _Listen._ "

"Be clear, then. What is it you want?"

"Command," Suzaku said. "More of my own control. Too many of our own died tonight, too. I want you to give me permission to train them."

Lelouch tied a stitch and re-threaded his needle. "Train them? Train my Geassed soldiers? What good would it do at all?"

"The more they can do, the better your command will be overall. The broader your abilities. I can make them less bumbling. And when we get back to Japan? Those men, too."

"You finally want to help me." Lelouch smiled, down at his half-made ensemble. Suzaku was starting to accept their mission.

Did that mean that it was nearly time to leave? He'd been lucky, in a sense, living this way for so long. Travelling. Drinking strong coffee. Just looking.

"Yes, I want to help, Lelouch. I have since you destroyed your parents. It's just that I see cracks in some of your methods. The more I watch, the more I understand _why_ you do things like you do, but you need to start understanding me, too. Try listening to me, and I'll do anything to guide you. I'll be the sword you want me to become."

Lelouch looked at Suzaku, feeling disconnected. What had happened to his knight, to make him profess these things? Perhaps C.C….

"Anything?" Lelouch replied, once again set on his guard. "Are you willing to destroy everything you love, to create something better, something wholly new?"

"Yes," Suzaku whispered it. "Even if I have to kill more people."

Then it was time to make their second move.

Lelouch looked at the calendar. Nearly a month here, like he had predicted. He pulled himself out of his chair, realizing he'd been there too long. His shoulders ached.

He looked at Suzaku. "If you think you're ready, then go ahead. Take whatever you desire."

Suzaku recoiled a bit at the wording, but then he just nodded and swept from the room.

And thus, Lelouch granted his knight permission to train every single one of their armies.

Lelouch alerted Jeremiah of their progress, then plotted their route back to the royal palace. The triumvirate that would rule the world as empress, knight, and emperor prepared to slip back into the sea of battle, like fish on a quiet noon tide.


	14. Acceptance

The three of them crept in when guardsman awareness was low. The first people they threatened were Lloyd and Cécile.

"Ahaaa!" stammered Lloyd, "I expected a surprise. Catastrophe was bound to tiptoe in. I guess it's from behind…."

"But so much force is unexpected," Cécile faltered, "considering that Suzaku—" She stopped.

Suzaku hovered with his sword against her throat. Even as Suzaku held her at bay, he twisted Lloyd down, so Lloyd couldn't sound the alarm. Flintiness and fear colluded in Cécile's pale eyes.

Lelouch strolled in and became their point of focus.

"Don't make any sudden moves," he suggested. He didn't look at them. He monitored the conflict in his knight's stiff body language.

But Suzaku said evenly, "If you cooperate, then we'll explain..." Arthur darted up and bit him happily from behind.

By nightfall, their triumvirate had secured the whole palace. Not a wardrobe failed to escape notice, not a man remained able to hide from them. Lelouch rooted out everyone and cast a simple Geass. _Obey me._ Those Lelouch wished in the know were briefed, and debriefed, and discussions were completed.

Then came the need for beauty rest.

"If you would follow me this way, wondrous son of Empress Marianne…."

"At your ease, Jeremiah," Lelouch said, as the man once called Orange escorted he, C.C. and Suzaku to their sleeping places.

Lelouch watched Suzaku grow easy, as they navigated wings that turned out to be Schneizel's abandoned quarters. It was good, finding that Schneizel remained in hiding, despite Lelouch's sneaking back. It meant Schneizel's informers still had no real leads.

Lelouch decided to enjoy stealing his brother's wing. For Suzaku, however, the wing was not a triumph – more of a familiar comfort. Lelouch could see his shoulders loosen, and the flintiness ebb from his eyes.

C.C. acted like she always did. "My," she said to Suzaku, without changing expressions. "I guess you're more Britannian than even Lelouch is."

Suzaku looked at Lelouch and replied, "She's sleeping in _your_ room tonight, is that correct?"

"In his bed," C.C. responded. It went on.

Jeremiah showed C.C. to her own private room despite suggestive commentary. She tisked, but went inside, yawning.

"Expect pizza deliveries within the next half hour." Lelouch frowned when she shut the door. C.C. liked to eat right before she slept.

Jeremiah shrugged, and grinned, as he dropped Lelouch and Suzaku off in a hall with two rooms across from each other.

"You know," said Lelouch, outside his own door, once Jeremiah left and he prepared to bid Suzaku goodnight, "From here on out, this will only get harder. There won't be time for you to hate C.C.."

Suzaku stroked Arthur, who curled in his arms. "I don't hate C.C., Lelouch." Arthur purred and curled in closer.

"Learn to call me 'Your Highness.'" Lelouch said, attempting not to become jealous of the cat. "Better yet, perhaps 'Your Majesty.'"

"Tomorrow," Suzaku returned, denying Lelouch the pleasure. He'd wanted so to hear the title leaving Suzaku's lips….

Suzaku put his hand on the doorknob that would click shut and separate them. Lelouch could see himself reflected in it. He recalled a night that seemed lifetimes ago, in which he'd relied on a similar doorknob to grant him some form of discretion.

What he had buried flared further to life.

"I still haven't told you the whole of my plan." Lelouch murmured it, despite knowing he shouldn't. Now wasn't the time to reveal what he'd planned, but it gnawed at him; he wanted to air out his secrets and burdens as soon as he could, like damp piles of laundry. And yet, Lelouch had little right to set himself at ease by doing so. No right to think about pleasure – relief – in a world that had no Nunnally.

But maybe, if Lelouch proceeded carefully, tonight—

"I finally trust you again," Suzaku told him. "So please don't push anything else yet, okay?" He turned his doorknob. "I'm tired. Good night."

_Good night?_ The words were sticky, honeyed lies.

"Good night," Lelouch repeated, just perpetuating them. "Don't forget tomorrow's agenda."

"I'll be up before you, at sunrise."

Lelouch resolved, for just that night, not to wake up shivering and forsake his room to join C.C. and chubby Cheese-kun.

The next day was their grand debut. Suzaku's renewed trust was tested afresh, when Lelouch had them dress in their school uniforms.

"Why in these?" Suzaku asked. He came around the dresser, only once they both had pulled their pants and shirts on.

"I can think of no better attire in which to show the world that we'll be conquering it together." Lelouch smoothed down the cuffs around his wrists.

The truth was, he felt a little nostalgic. Life had been much simpler, in their Ashford days, hadn't it. To think he'd thought they'd waded through too many layers back _then_ ….

What now? What next, inside their latest guise?

He pulled his jacket on, and then his shoes. Emperor. _Emperor_ Lelouch… and his knight.

Suzaku stood, still buttoning his shirt. His back was turned, like always when he changed.

Another glimpse into a life long gone. Lelouch stole glances at Suzaku's profile.

He recalled again that he didn't want to rule.

Lelouch had never lusted for the throne. He'd only wanted to forge a place where he and Nunnally could live in peace.

_I suppose it was naïve,_ Lelouch reflected. _Don't look down on a nation for its useless government, unless you are able and willing to better govern it yourself…._ Lelouch had never wanted that much power. Perhaps that was why – until C's World – he hadn't considered taking said power himself, even if he were to defeat his father.

But things were different now, weren't they. Lelouch had no choice but to proceed as planned. If he had to take such command, he'd do it with finesse, and even try to work up relish. Imagine the looks on all his siblings' faces. Not to mention, another special note….

Lelouch's heartbeat skipped, as Suzaku donned his jacket. He'd see Suzaku finally able to shine, the way Suzaku always had deserved to. Finally in a position where every breathtaking aspect of Suzaku would be respected—

And made a better use of. For Suzaku was working _with_ him _._

"What about the fancy clothes you ordered?"

"I didn't think you were so interested."

Suzaku fastened his collar. He smoothed his fleur-du-lis. "I hope you know, designing uniforms isn't a game…."

They walked in silence to the brimming throne room. From backstage with C.C., they picked out Odysseus, Carine, and Guinevere – standing in the front row, wearing bored, puffed up expressions.

Lelouch retained his outward calm. "Guinevere's taste in ugly accessories hasn't changed." All of them were rabble. He'd be stupid to feel nervous.

Suzaku frowned, and then mounted the catwalk. "Lelouch. I'll be ready, if anything happens."

Lelouch waved a dismissive hand.

"Try not to disrespect them," Suzaku reminded. "Remember, in the Britannian court—"

He walked with even paces out on stage.

Even if he flubbed, Lelouch decided – ignoring Suzaku's mutters, his chin lifted – the three of them would come out on top somehow, with the combined skills they brought to the empire. Lelouch was prepared to be seen by the world. To be judged by people Geass could never reach. Far and wide across the globe, people would laugh at him, hate him, or support him, but it wouldn't matter.

His rule would become absolute.

His settling on the throne produced gasps and cries like those who watched viewed some uncertain dinner theatre. Lelouch crossed his legs, and reality dawned further; he shattered their fourth wall – a spoon, ringing audaciously on the sensitive flute of truth.

He would have liked to have a painting done of Carine's face, but no one left at court could paint like Clovis. He also would have liked to make Odysseus do a tap dance.

"I am Lelouch vi Britannia, the 99th emperor. I have returned from the depths of Hell…."

No one liked it when he said he'd killed his father. Guinevere exploded; she sent up the guards with lances. Lelouch didn't bat an eye… but that did not mean he sat unaffected.

The most delicious, body-shaking thrill tremored through him when Suzaku's defense started with a plummet from the ceiling. No longer could Lelouch contain a self-satisfied smirk. The feeling in him curled as Suzaku rose – imposing and completely splendid.

"Allow me to introduce Suzaku Kururugi," Lelouch exclaimed, with a gesture to endorse it. "My knight."

_His knight._ The words again stirred him. Shivers and quick, rolling waves trembled through him. They left a fiery, wanton heat through every fiber of Lelouch's being.

"He is the Round beyond all other Rounds."

Lelouch knew that at last he'd done something _right._

_Suzaku, you belong to me. You're_ bound _to me – and willingly._ The heat left Lelouch dizzy. High.

"I grant him the title of Knight of Zero."

Suzaku's matching, approving smirk shot Lelouch higher. Ah, appreciation. Until now, Suzaku had remained unaware of what his title was to be. If there had been any doubt left until now as to whether Suzaku _wanted_ to be Lelouch's knight….

Lelouch's smirk expanded, from self-satisfied to confrontational with the room.

_Suzaku is the best there is, beyond you all… and he is finally on my side._

Odysseus chuckled. He ambled up, and patronized Lelouch something quite unacceptable.

Lelouch rose. "Why don't I make this easy for you all to understand?" Odysseus dared to smile at him.

Lelouch ensured the _all hails_ wouldn't die out for long, long time.

He and Suzaku left the stage. C.C. said she'd remain behind.

Lelouch and Suzaku went outside, where the sun offered itself in homage, a radiant coin. "What do you want for dinner?" Lelouch asked. "The whole kitchen staff will be under my command. I could make them toast the Knight of Zero."

"Toast the way you angered Guinevere."

Lelouch glanced over, warming to the surprise that was Suzaku's straight-faced but clearly humorous intention.

"That will have gone on television." Pursed lips twitched under green eyes.

Lelouch resolved to turn suppressed delight to outright helplessness. "You enjoyed her scandalized expression?" He steered them toward the garden, flush with the effect of their unbuttoned conversation. "Exquisite, what anger management fails to do for her still. When I was young, Cornelia borrowed her bra—"

"Don't lie," Suzaku said instantly.

"The screeching didn't stop for a whole week. The problem was, the bra turned out to be too small by two sizes. Guinevere said Cornelia knew it would – that Cornelia asked for one only to cause Guinevere insult."

"That's what people get, for lumping everyone together, in the palace when there's rivalry between the royal offspring." Suzaku followed Lelouch's path. His smile faded, like the sun, as it came down now filtered by the leaves. "Lelouch—" His tone deepened. "Don't take this too far. You can still reconsider how you want to shift Britannia."

And just like that, the ease evaporated. Ease, but not Lelouch's adrenaline; although his step faltered at Suzaku's words, he didn't change his own conceited speech patterns.

"Too far?" uttered Lelouch, as if he thought it all a boon. For Suzaku to talk more of a shift inside Britannia…. No. Lelouch still burned to _crush_ it. "How about you, the highest ranking knight alive? I didn't order you to come down spinning from the ceiling." Lelouch made sure he cut through the begonias – the place where once, Carine had yanked Nunnally's hair to get first to the blossoms.

Suzaku went around, and met Lelouch on the path's other side.

"Being Knight of Zero means I have a right to any kind of conduct, as long as I get my task done, doesn't it?" For an instant, Lelouch thought he detected further humor.

Then Lelouch broke eye contact. Suzaku incited a recklessness in him. Suzaku, the aphrodisiac – designed to feed the power trip Lelouch had finally thought receded. He wasn't sure he could take more of the drug, if the general aim was for him to come down.

And yet. The fact remained that Lelouch hadn't felt this optimistic since before Nunnally died. Their plan would _work_. Lelouch had nabbed the throne. The prospect of having no choice but to rule looked less abhorrent with Suzaku willing to banter.

Suzaku looked at Lelouch intently. "Dramatics," he announced, referring once again to Lelouch's retort about ceilings. "Something Zero appreciates. That's why I moved the way I did."

The comment struck Lelouch stone dumb.

Suzaku had stopped walking. Lelouch halted as well. His heart thudded afresh. He said, "Yes, Zero likes heightened dramatics."

Suzaku's hair glowed golden in the sun. Lelouch thought, _I will always melt, to feel the way you shine._

_You burn._

The birds twittered. Suzaku turned his gaze toward the sound, off by the water fountain, looking tranquil.

So. Suzaku had learned to understand why Zero used such flashy methods. Suzaku had learned to break down Zero's thinking – so intricately, now, that he'd predicted how Lelouch would want his new knight to behave. Impressively, of course. With flagrant flair. Dropping from the sky… and skillfully enough to leave no room for doubt or argument. Yes, conduct like that remained exactly what Lelouch wished to endorse – for the purpose of their partnered image.

Suzaku, all on his own, completely understood it.

"Suzaku," Lelouch said, in a broken voice that made Suzaku look at him. "It's time for me to tell you my whole plan."

"I see."

"I've called it Zero Requiem."

* * *

Suzaku met Lelouch in the library, in the following hour as Lelouch requested.

A maid had laid them a tea service, but Lelouch was between bookshelves, not yet ready to be eating. He heard a scuffing footstep and looked up to meet green eyes.

"Why here?"

Lelouch said, "It's quiet. It's private." The truth was, Lelouch had come to treasure this library.

In here, the staff could bring him refreshments and he could spend hours just musing. Lelouch could read and study what he wanted, unlike at Ashford where his curriculums were chosen. Books about tactics, war history, speeches by great orators…. Stage plays and fables and aristocrats' memoirs. Lelouch wrapped himself in other people's words, so he didn't have to think about his own. Emperor Lelouch did not exist when he read stories.

Suzaku glanced at the shelf Lelouch perused. "It's funny. It took until just now for me to realize I don't even know what kind of books you read."

"Why should you have known what kind, prior to this?" Lelouch asked. "I'm surprised you reflect upon reading."

Suzaku only frowned and said, "I liked children's books when I was little. And I always liked plays, no matter how complex. I liked to see them." He stood at attention. Lelouch, annoyed by the formality, reached out to pluck down Shakespeare's _Hamlet_.

"Still… lots of books I just can't seem to read. Not from language barriers, but because the stories are so fanciful and unrealistic."

Lelouch became surprised enough to lose his spot in _Hamlet_. "Didn't you spend most of your life being just that kind of idealist? And what is it, Suzaku, that makes a story more realistic? Is fiction not a window through which readers are shown truths they never fathomed?"

"The worlds created are just lies," Suzaku said. "If books need to tell people things, they just ought to express it."

"Non-fiction," Lelouch responded. "Easy to dismiss, because real life is dull and common. People don't want commonness; they want the sheer miraculous. That's why lies are needed. And the right ones—"

Suzaku snatched _Hamlet_ from his fingers.

"The right lies are still lies," Suzaku whispered, "but at least people can choose whether or not they want to entertain them."

Their shoulders indiscreetly brushed. Suzaku opened the play and began to read random lines. Lelouch was overcome with the need to ask a question, before Suzaku entirely dismissed him.

"But do you hate the books, Suzaku, or the people who write them?"

Suzaku didn't look up from the annotated verse. "At first, I think I hate the books. Then I realize books are only words. It's the people who wrote the words that had the wrong ideas, and who deserve the blame."

"And so, it's useless to resent what's not the person."

"Mmn. Like how Kallen says, 'Britannia is wrong.' She gets upset at the system. But blaming the system doesn't help her focus or pick a direction, and it doesn't take into account that sometimes, there's no choice _but_ to work within a system." Suzaku snapped the hardcover play shut.

Lelouch understood what their discussion had come to suggest. Suzaku wanted him to know that whatever Lelouch was about to reveal, Suzaku would listen only because he had no choice now – as part of Lelouch's system.

Lelouch conceded to Suzaku's words. "Indeed," he said. "Systems are run by individuals. _They_ make the poor decisions, and sometimes you can't defeat them."

"That's why, in the end, to bring down the Britannia you hated—"

"I targeted my father," Lelouch finished the sentence. "With my hatred focused on just him, I was able to triumph and move on." Lelouch waited for Suzaku to nod, to show they tuned on the same channel. "Therefore, it's logical enough to say, 'Individuals, not systems, must be vanquished first, to march toward the future.'"

"Otherwise," Suzaku said, "there'd be too much debate, and no actions taken. No one would agree about how people should proceed. Looking at a system, there's no good place they can start. If, instead, it's one or two _people_ …" Suzaku made a gesture, though he didn't change expressions. "Off with their heads," he announced, wryly, because the fictional quotation had expressed a perfect truth.

"Yes, that's right, Suzaku," Lelouch said. "That's exactly right." He found that he was smiling.

The joyless smile ebbed, reflected in Suzaku's eyes. Suzaku said, "This is what you want to tell me."

There was no need for Lelouch to nod.

"That I will become the individual responsible for all catastrophes henceforward," Lelouch concurred. "That my plan is to collect the world's hatred on myself, until everyone agrees that I'm the foremost problem. Then, it will be child's play to wipe my life away." Lelouch made sure his gaze didn't waver, despite that he held _Hamlet_ tight. "Get rid of me, Suzaku, and all the hatred in this world will die as well. People will finally be willing to talk, instead of fight with one another. Kill me, when the moment is right, when I'm utterly loathed, and the world will birth anew."

"How do you know it will work out like that?" Suzaku stood rigid between the bookshelves.

"I don't, but I would like to place my bet on human beings. If I ask them to hate me, I believe they'll do so."

It would be like casting a Geass on the world. By purloining the throne – no; he'd rightfully succeeded – Lelouch had already come near to the goal. All that remained, after he tore apart Britannian culture….

"You're going to die," Suzaku murmured. "And that's how you want to atone." It was almost a question. Almost.

"The one to kill me will be you, Suzaku. Or should I say… I'd like Zero to do it."

"Zero. He's who you want me to become? You want that symbol to keep thriving?" The first flash of emotion darkened Suzaku's expression.

Lelouch held Suzaku's deep emerald stare. "Did you think I'd forgotten what you most desire? I can't take your life away from you, Suzaku. But even so, the person you are can still end up under a headstone. Wear the mask of Zero, and Suzaku Kururugi ceases to exist." Lelouch tried to infuse his voice with hope. "Instead, you can sacrifice your every breath for the sake of the world. That is what Zero does."

_Please,_ he thought, _tell me that it's enough for you._

"I thought that it might end up something like this."

Lelouch looked away, at the colored book-bindings. Ah – that easy to accept, for Suzaku? What had Lelouch really wanted of him? Tears? An embrace? He'd be foolish to expect anything but Suzaku's approval. After all, it had been Suzaku's idea—

"Well, not _exactly_ like this, but similar."

Lelouch swallowed. "How did you know?"

"Because," said Suzaku, " _my_ hatred for you is already collected. I've wanted to kill you, so that you would pay. Before thinking of moving on, I think that I should grind you down, because you've just been in my way."

Lelouch told him, "That thinking is correct." He didn't let Suzaku's verbal slap cause him to waver. "Creation only comes out of destruction, Suzaku. I was violent; I've always been prepared to have that violence turned on me as a result. It's only fitting," Lelouch told him. "Will you do it?"

Suzaku lowered _Hamlet._ "We can't go back in time," he said. "I can't think of another option." Lelouch wondered if Suzaku thought about Euphy.

"There isn't one. That's why we have to do it. Both of us will die, to fix the world – and because of the actions we took while we were living, no one we leave behind will mourn us when we're finally gone. There won't be any eulogies."

"There will be zero requiems."

Lelouch smiled again. "You truly are exceptional." A proud, but melancholy resolution swelled his chest. "Shall we move toward it, Suzaku? The punishment called Zero Requiem?"

Suzaku cast his eyes aside. He seemed to be reflecting, assessing.

They stayed quiet a long time.

"Why does it have to be me?" Suzaku asked.

"A perfectly worthless and obnoxious question." Lelouch took _Hamlet_ from Suzaku's hands. He returned the play to its book-niche, arm steady.

Suzaku said, "I think you'll be afraid."

"I think so, too," Lelouch answered.

* * *

Later, in the library, Lelouch remained with his hand resting on a shelf. He didn't trust Suzaku to refrain from making death painful. The thought began to slither unwarranted shudders through him. And yet, he _did_ trust Suzaku to pick a method that would take him by surprise. Surprise – in such a fatal case – was what Lelouch relied upon.

Suzaku brought his own skills to the board; as such, Lelouch couldn't predict enough to guess at Zero's actions. On top of that, Lelouch hadn't specified the manner, day, or time he ought to die. He'd merely ensured Suzaku understood in what hypothetical situation Lelouch's death would guarantee the most advantage.

Yes. Instead of be afraid, he should take comfort in the lack of knowing. No matter how hard he tried to imagine the way his death would find him, he would never, ever guess it. He wouldn't know until death stared him in the face. He could cast aside thinking about it. What sense was there in dwelling on such vague, mushrooming fears?

All that mattered, Lelouch assured himself, was that Suzaku would succeed.

* * *

Lelouch realized they still had days.

Months.

Time.

The next morning, he came upon Suzaku in the courtyard. He halted, appalled by the turbulence witnessed.

Suzaku stood trembling at the head of a fallen, blood-soaked soldier. He looked down at his boots. His gloves. As if he didn't see them. Stalling.

Lelouch was looking at the ruby splashes staining his white Rounds tailcoat.

He ran to Suzaku's side. "What happened?"

Suzaku came out of his reverie. "I-I—"

" _Death to you, Suzaku Kururugi!"_

Suzaku flinched, but Lelouch at once reacted.

He'd thought the soldier on the ground completely dead. The _not_ -dead man reached for the gun he'd apparently used to threaten Suzaku... and Lelouch slammed a heel down on his wrist, accompanying the pressure with a grinding, twisting motion.

A piercing scream bounced off the courtyard walls.

"Lelouch—!"

"I am 'Your Majesty,'" Lelouch announced, for the benefit of Suzaku's would-be killer. The blood began to make him queasy, but he kept his foot in place. Brutal – and adding to his list of his sins. "I see someone failed to make eye contact last time I ordered loyalty."

His palms had grown moist; he balled them into fists. He'd known that it could not be helped if a few people escaped his Geass. And yet, to prompt an incident like this—

He ground his foot next into the soldier's gunshot wound, somewhere in the torso. Further screams. "Look at me," Lelouch commanded.

Suzaku grabbed him. "Don't. Enough."

"He tried to kill you, Suzaku."

"But you already know he can't."

Lelouch could feel the courtyard watching. Damn them all, for none had run to Suzaku's aid. Lelouch said, to the dying soldier, " _Look at me._ You don't deserve the mercy of my Knight of Zero. Lelouch vi Britannia commands you—"

With a rattling sigh, the soldier died.

Lelouch, cursing softly, replaced his purple contacts. Suzaku dropped to the ground, fruitlessly checking the man's pulse.

"Kururugi."

"L-Lelouch—"

"You will need to throw away those clothes." He kept his voice calm. Their audience expanded like a collection of dolls.

Suzaku looked down at his Knight of Rounds attire. The blood had even spurted onto the royal blue cape and stained it.

"His aim wasn't good at all," Suzaku stammered. "The bullet didn't even graze me. But when he came in closer, with the muzzle to my chest—"

"You broke his wrist, to flip the gun around, and forced his own finger to pull the trigger on himself."

"All I should have had to do was dodge…."

"You might not have lived if you'd only done that. Clearly, a kind of _instinct_ helped you sense this man's ability—"

"Don't. Don't finish that sentence." Suzaku clapped both hands to his temples, as if he'd squeeze the Geass out of himself through the eyes.

Instead, what collected in Suzaku's eyes were tears. They did not fall; Suzaku didn't blink to let them.

Lelouch felt something protective in him stir. But the emperor refused to soften before those who lingered. Wide-eyed maids and butlers gawked, curious.

He lowered his voice so that at least they couldn't hear. "If you hate my Geass," Lelouch told him, "and you feel it forces you to do what you would never dare, then do something about it, Knight of Zero."

As the other guards at last jogged over, Lelouch told them to get rid of the soldier's leaking corpse. He dismissed them afterward – along with the entire courtyard – bidding everyone leave him and Suzaku alone. He nearly laughed at the sight of the exodus, seeing again a slew of adults following the whim of someone still dressed like a schoolboy. Lelouch smoothed down his Ashford uniform.

He bent down, and took the gun the dead man had so short-sightedly toted. He murmured, despite that Suzaku ignored him. "If you lose control when the Geass kicks in, learn to take that control back. You can't beat the order I gave you to live. But I didn't Geass you with specifics about _how_ you must live on. Have you really not thought of this, knowing that you'll inherit Zero?"

"Please don't talk to me right now."

"Use it like a blade, Suzaku. Create that blade's specifications yourself. Instead of thinking, 'I must live,' try, 'If I'm going to live, I must do _x_.'" Lelouch pressed him, despite Suzaku's warning. "Did you ever think that maybe you fired FLEIJA because you couldn't come up with an alternate option inside the moment?"

The color drained from Suzaku's face. He still had not climbed up from where he'd crouched to tend to his assailant. His posture matched the cobblestones, but Lelouch made his own posture as hard.

"Perhaps you didn't plan ahead enough. Perhaps it's like training your mind to prepare for and subsequently detect lucid dreams." Lelouch gave Suzaku more space, when Suzaku began to rise. "Prepare for the Geass. Assume the Geass will resort to extreme measures, and think about _less_ extreme options that might also prove effective. Resolve to make your urge to live result in using violence only if the violence is constructive."

Suzaku stepped backward – denying Lelouch, denying his Geass. "It doesn't work like that." Lelouch had struck a delicate nerve, and both of them knew it. Yes, so delicate….

"How do you know?" Lelouch demanded.

"You're not the one who has to fight it!" Suzaku's expression – craggy – told him, _Geass is an absolute._

"If you won't even try it, then—" Lelouch resorted to instinctive measures.

He reached out and caught Suzaku's hip. He snagged the closest belt loop… and then yanked Suzaku nearer. Suzaku, gasping at the touch, looked down.

But when he dared to look back up—

Lelouch's gaze was amethyst. "You're of no use to me like this."

The gun he held kissed Suzaku underneath the chin, and Lelouch pulled the trigger faster than a hiccupped breath.

A blur of motion passed like wind. A shot fired, and loudly echoed. A rapid change of position occurred that Lelouch couldn't have followed if it meant reanimating the dead—

And then, in the space of a blink, Suzaku held him from behind. One arm wrapped close around his waist. The other twisted Lelouch's gun arm like it was rubber. The arm, wrenched tight, was pasted hard behind his back.

And yet, the only blood present was from the murdered soldier. Lelouch had not so much as received a single scratch. Not one blue bruise.

"Well then." He whispered it, husky.

Suzaku sounded stricken when he finally replied; his voice came from close over Lelouch's shoulder. "How did—? I don't understand."

Suzaku had expected Lelouch to be maimed or murdered.

"I know what you're thinking," Lelouch told him bluntly. "You think I'm not harmed because I didn't want to kill you. Well I'm sorry, Suzaku, but I did try my utmost to make spaghetti of your brains." The ease they'd started to re-form now plummeted out the proverbial window. To undo the healing they'd done was detrimental and rash – but Lelouch wanted to teach Suzaku a lesson.

"Requiem is coming." Lelouch thrashed in Suzaku's hold. "If you waste time on morbid inner conflict, and your intent is to deny me to my death, I'd rather finish you myself."

"Despite that killing me is impossible? Don't you see the contradiction that you've come to make?"

"Perhaps your first step," Lelouch snapped, "is to begin to look at it like what I gave you was a gift."

Suzaku tightened his grip, and thickly swallowed. Lelouch could feel the motions through their bodies pressed together.

Lelouch raised his free hand – without caring that he couldn't see behind him. While Suzaku's hold at his waist kept on tightening, Lelouch slid his fingers beneath Suzaku's chin. He touched the place where he had pressed the muzzle of the soldier's gun.

Suzaku flinched, as Lelouch next caressed his pulse point, carefully. He felt Suzaku's skin grow deliciously hot.

Suzaku uttered, so that Lelouch could feel it vibrate, "The Geass should have made me at least hurt you." The words were a breath that brushed Lelouch's cheek.

He shivered. "Except it didn't." His chest went tight, when Suzaku began to tremble also.

_Slowly_ , Lelouch told himself. Suzaku's temper might seize like a mousetrap. "Perhaps you didn't want it to. Perhaps you knew that, if you wanted to live, your best bet was still to partner with me."

"This— I just. I can't… _Lelouch…._ "

"Suzaku," Lelouch said. "Relax. You're learning your abilities and limits. Bit by bit, your stressors will subside." Lelouch at last allowed his voice find its normal timbre. He dropped his hand and put it on Suzaku's arm, where Suzaku still held him. He'd be the lifeline now, if it was needed. "You've just succeeded at curbing what you thought was a berserk mode. Appreciate the progress."

"You're going to ask me to do it again."

"I am, Suzaku – because I'm so impressed. There really is no reckoning with you."

Suzaku came to himself, released Lelouch, and pushed Lelouch's touch away.

Lelouch allowed himself a breath of air. Suzaku would come to work the Geass to his benefit. Suzaku would learn Lelouch was harsh only for predetermined purposes – when he wanted to hone or to temper his knight, in order to make them work better together.

Before Lelouch left the courtyard, he said, "Now – really. Throw out those wrecked clothes."

"And wear what instead?"

"Our new outfits are ready."

The rest of the day passed, and the day after that, without any Geass-related incidents recurring. Lelouch donned his white robes for the first time. Suzaku wore his new pilot suit, and hid inside the cape as if he needed its dark shroud to help him muse.

Lelouch put up with the occasional glances he felt were meant to analyze him.

"Suzaku."

"What."

"They're only clothes."

"That's not what I—" but promptly Suzaku would fall quiet.

When given openings to talk of Zero Requiem, Suzaku retreated, and Lelouch deigned to let him.

Yes, he was content to let it lie. Suzaku would beat his conflict at his own pace, and for now…. If Lelouch had to bear an excess of _your majesties_ and gallant bows, it wasn't unattractive.

No, not unattractive in the slightest. Not coming from Suzaku with such polished, handsome deference. Even if Suzaku still refused to fully kneel, the sight of him inspired thrills.

Lelouch's sole complaint was that Suzaku's regard felt distant.

He countered the feeling with great bouts of action. He made sure no more eyes escaped his group-deliveries of Geass. He extinguished every fire of rebellion that cropped up in hidden places. Jeremiah became indispensible; the man even kept Lloyd and Cécile in line. Lelouch still hadn't used Geass on them, and eventually Suzaku realized Lelouch did not intend to.

That night, after the two adults excused themselves from dinner – the Albion would not grow its own energy wings, Lloyd protested – Suzaku watched them go without once glaring at Lelouch in warning.

Lelouch twirled his wine glass, pleasantly unwound and warm. Suzaku had taken off his cape; he sat there in his blue suit, staring.

"You've really started doing what's best for them all, and not just for yourself, haven't you."

"I'm insulted, Suzaku. Am I not as good as my word?"

Suzaku frowned at Lelouch's wine glass. "Don't think that you can get carried away. Remember, even forcing good intentions on others—"

"Is like a form of tyranny," Lelouch finished calmly, swallowing the last swirl of crimson elixir. "Yes, I'm aware. I'm counting on the Black Knights to become aware as well – despite that I'll announce I'd like to join the UFN. Remember, I'm not abolishing the aristocracy and burning mausoleums because it will make the world better. Both of us know well it won't. I'm painting myself the world's worst hypocrite, by pressing my values on the populace. By reigning, when I've just proclaimed Britannia and emperors to be less than democratic, I intend to make—"

"I know." And then Suzaku left him at the table – with his most forced _your majesty._

Lelouch, startled, understood that Suzaku had exited only when he'd seen Lelouch reach for more wine. Lelouch had leaned back and crossed his legs after he did it…. Did Suzaku think he was over-indulging? Why _shouldn't_ Lelouch enjoy sumptuousness?

It seemed he had misjudged Suzaku's recovery rate. Suzaku, over time, was not finding acceptance or cultivating ease again. Every day, they two were less and less themselves, and far more stoic knight and emperor.

He sighed. So much for progression, then. Had they hit some impenetrable road block? Lelouch knew that both of them had to play roles. But was there a need to mock said necessity, when it was just to two of them?

Lelouch had half a mind to thunder after Suzaku – shake him – as useless a threat as it would be.

Then Suzaku poked his head back in. He exclaimed, from the threshold, "Can you review C.C.'s machine specs? Cécile says it can't wait any more. And they both want to know why you made it so pink." He ducked his head. "Your Majesty."

_What can I do?_ Lelouch wanted to rasp. _What can I do, to weaken your resistance?_

They shouldn't be required to suffer, even alone, even together here. Or should they? Was pain, while they were together, what Suzaku wished for them both? Was this kind of suffering and tension what Suzaku thought they deserved?

Wasn't it enough, that Lelouch had birthed Zero Requiem? How much sooner could he force it to fruition? What good would it do to maintain grudges, sour faces, right up to the climax… when the time they had right now was the only time they had left with each other?

The only time they had left with each other.

Lelouch set down his wine glass, sickened. He hadn't thought he cared about that; he'd thought he only wanted time to collect himself, as he planned for his own finish. Time to admire Suzaku innocently, without causing old, familiar repercussions. All of their past camaraderie lay slaughtered already, did it not? All Lelouch was worried about, he tried to tell himself, was their most basic, loose relationship.

But even as Lelouch sought to convince himself of that, he felt the pang inside his chest.

Suzaku was still waiting for his answer in the doorway.

"Pink is a pure, feminine color," Lelouch said. "C.C. should learn to match its soothing tones."

"She wanted it yellow," Suzaku replied, "like cheese. You're thinking about Nunnally." The words were hard. Suzaku retreated.

Instead of follow Suzaku out, Lelouch crumpled his lacey napkin.

He heard a rustling noise from behind him.

"Aha~! I didn't mean to witness that, exactly." Lloyd came around the table, grinning. "I seem to have left my…." Abruptly, he halted. "Your Majesty, that kind of bottled anger's bound to kill you."

"It won't, because my sins already have," Lelouch exclaimed, getting up sharply from the table. "It's just that my ashes are still in the air, and Suzaku can't breathe them without wrinkling his nose!"

* * *

It was later that same night when Lelouch barged in on Suzaku while he was training. Suzaku wore his hakama pants and his dogi, looking Japanese down to his split-toed socks. A green tea mug sat steeping.

"I want to confirm something," Lelouch announced. He used the clear, military-sounding phrase Suzaku had used on Lelouch many times.

_Tashikametai,_ Lelouch said – in part, because he wanted to off-set his seriousness, and in part because, days before, Suzaku had come to him and said, straight-faced, _All of the conditions have been cleared._

Suzaku paused, with his wooden sword in hand.

His form was stark and beautiful. Lelouch didn't hide that he admired it. He let his eyes comb Suzaku's attire, accepting Suzaku's startled look as permission to keep on speaking.

"I'm sensing there's a stick crammed up a place you find unbearable."

He thought Suzaku turned a little fuchsia.

"I won't ask how it got there, but it's clear how much you suffer. Please accept my heartfelt sympathy for your condition. That said, could you remove said obstacle at your nearest convenience? I can't tell you how tiring and demoralizing it is to have a knight who even now insists upon—"

Suzaku – not bothering to keep his sword completely clear – pushed Lelouch out of the room, and slammed the door the instant it was done.

Lelouch had expected physical retaliation; he'd been trying for days to get Suzaku to recall they were equals, and entitled to whatever rough-house teenaged antics they desired. However, if he couldn't initiate their rowdiness again – camaraderie – he'd at least like to erase Suzaku's idea that every instant they spent together should be spent in suffering.

Not even a business-like relationship would function if it were made of only tension.

Tonight, it seemed Lelouch had finally broken down a wall. But he hadn't expected Suzaku to shut him out so fast immediately after.

"How bold, Suzaku," Lelouch called through the door. "But you know, I find your readiness to manhandle me far more endearing than your scowling face and formal knight behavior."

Lelouch perceived a muffled thud. Suzaku, sliding down to lean his back against the door?

"Do you think you could humor a request," Lelouch asked next, "and pretend again we're going through all this as people who might actually be friends with one another?"

Just pretend. Like memories once wiped. Like telling lies at Ashford, hiding close behind their masks. Pretending intimacy that – while thoroughly quashed – was good enough a mimicry that they still hoped things would get better.

He heard his name whispered. A raspy, _Lelouch._ Then, louder. "I can't pretend," Suzaku said. "Because from the start, I was never pretending."

Lelouch said, "Oh? Are we speaking in conundrums?"

"With you, I've never known _how_ to pretend. Not when it involved a form of friendship. It's not easy, to forget our time as children."

"Then please explain to me why now, when our plans depend on that solid bond of friendship, you're acting like the sight of me disgusts you."

Suzaku stayed quiet a long time. Lelouch heard clothing rustle. "I'm _trying_." He thought he heard Suzaku sigh. "I'm trying to cast what went so wrong aside. But what we've done… has tainted this."

"Then you aren't trying hard enough." As soon as Lelouch muttered it, he wished he had suppressed his tongue. _Slowly_ , Lelouch reminded himself. _Suzaku requires longer steeping time—_

Suzaku's answer was high-pitched and swift. "If it's so easy from your end, then maybe _I'm_ the one who did this wrong," he broke and said. His sword made a noise like it bumped on the ground. "Maybe the lust I acted on made things too complicated, for what you liked to call friendship."

The jump into what territory Lelouch had avoided slicked him like oil. He felt at once queasy. A little greasy.

"Lust?" he breathed, so quietly Suzaku didn't hear it.

Suzaku fell silent. Seconds passed. "I think of all the games we played, and it makes me just… sick inside. I can't think now of why we did it – complicated this so much. I'm asking myself, was it a kind of suicide? Then why do I still care if I'm allowed to make him smile?"

Lelouch's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"I think I want to start again," Suzaku went on, "for what the three of us were worth. It's like I owe us – at least Nunnally – to try. Then I think of what's left now, what you want to do, and I wonder. Is there any use in trying? Nunnally's not here. I don't know what I really want. I don't know what, inside my heart…."

Lelouch stood there. His fingers fiddled with the gems that hung from his embroidered belt. For a few telling moments, he fought with himself, and then he said thickly, "Acknowledged, Suzaku."

There came another ruffling noise. Suzaku swallowed so the sound was audible.

Lelouch's knees became a little weak. He too sank down against the door, and leaned his head backward, and just closed his eyes.

Out loud, he uttered, "Does it hurt? Is that why you're not sure you want to care?"

"Do you listen to yourself?" Suzaku asked him, instantly. "Don't you understand the knots you've tied? Of course it hurts. If I decide to care again, how can I go through Zero Requiem?"

"If you _don't_ chose to care again, how can you? Afterward, the world will need you to be kind and understanding. If you don't lighten up now, Suzaku, you might fail further down the line. Think of it from that perspective, if you can manage nothing else."

Suzaku said, "Lelouch… if I start caring, I'll want to give back Zero's mask."

Lelouch fisted the carpet he'd sat down on. Then he sat up straight, as if on tightened puppet strings.

He made Suzaku repeat himself again.

When Suzaku had done so, Lelouch clenched his hands. "Your feelings toward me would shake you enough to tempt you to abandon Requiem?"

Suzaku didn't answer him. Lelouch wanted to shout, _You promised_ , but he realized with a jolt… Suzaku hadn't.

Suzaku hadn't officially promised. Not once, while they'd stood there talking between bookshelves.

Lelouch's words now were to fight for his penance. "Suzaku, your sentiment is winsome, but don't tell me you feel enough to make you cast my plans aside. That would suggest you've forgiven me, and we both know you never can. Even if the friendship we had re-solidifies, it doesn't mean you have to bypass every act I harmed you with. In fact, punishing me for it will be doing me a favor. Friends do favors all the time."

"You're warping ludicrous ideas to make them sound like they make sense."

"No matter what, you're going to kill me. If not, Suzaku, we can't atone." _And I don't want to live inside the world I wrecked,_ Lelouch thought, freezing. He thought of losing Nunnally.

He didn't _deserve_ to live, when he had helped to kill his little sister.

After a silence stretched out, Suzaku said, "Have you thought about dying at all, Your Majesty? What happens to your mind? What happens to your soul?"

There wasn't any bite in it. Suzaku was asking him weary, sad questions, in tones of weary, sad exasperation.

Lelouch flexed his fingers and shifted, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. There was a tightening in his chest – that fear again that he wrestled back. He said, "I've reconciled myself to it. Rest assured, I'm ready, Suzaku."

"Well, I'm not," Suzaku stated. He didn't call Lelouch out for his lie, or tell him _You're scared that your death will be painful_. Lelouch gripped the rug as Suzaku seemed to move around again behind the door. "Our argument about friendship aside…. People don't kill other people who matter."

Yes, they did.

They did it all the time.

They did it even knowingly. That was the reason Lelouch had killed Euphy.

Lelouch rose to his knees. He wrenched open the door.

Startled green eyes fixed on his double-Geass ones. Suzaku had turned around to face the door as well, as if he would keep pleading. "Lelouch—"

Lelouch said, "You are not allowed to forgive me."

Suzaku said, "I don't have to do what you tell me."

Lelouch said, "You need more time to come to your acceptance. I asked you to do this too soon; yes, I see. I'll find a different way, to make the task less burdensome—"

"You can't. I'm refusing to kill my best friend."

If all his frustration could turn into dollars…. Lelouch said, in his fit of passion, thinking and yet not, "Then kill your ex-lover!"

Suzaku's expression shifted – faces passing like pictures while flipping through booklets – from strained, to mad, to torn apart, then to a wide-eyed realization. Realization mixed with hurt. Lelouch didn't have time to analyze what made Suzaku look insulted.

Suzaku flinched backward as if he'd been stabbed. The wooden sword he'd clutched went clattering onto the floor. He rose and swept right past Lelouch – over the threshold, toward the outdoor garden. Lelouch remained in the breeze he left behind.

If all his frustration could turn into dollars, he'd hire Suzaku a great therapist.

Lelouch leaned on the doorframe. He supposed the talk could have gone worse.

Only now, he had a knight who was no longer loyal. He had to worry Suzaku would reject Zero Requiem.

Lelouch still swore not to give up. If Suzaku didn't want the absolution for himself that came with Requiem… if Suzaku rejected his half of the plan… what could Lelouch do but honor those choices? Even if Lelouch had to get Jeremiah to murder him instead….

A weariness came over him. If he were allowed, right now, to close his eyes… to close his eyes and not wake up, would Lelouch simply choose to die? If Suzaku would not grant his wish….

Lelouch fell asleep on the threshold. In the wee morning hours, firm arms lifted him.

Someone carried Lelouch to bed. He felt himself deposited on his canopied mattress, somewhere between dreams and fully awake. No, he wanted to go back to sleep…. He'd been in a greenhouse. And Shirley was there.

"Thank you, Gottwald," Lelouch managed, bleary.

He rolled over in darkness, to the sound of a light and flustered, knightly sigh.

* * *

Morning caught fire. They took out the horses, brushing and tacking them up without speaking. Lelouch had ordered the grooms to retire. They rode to the shimmering, man-made pond when the sky had turned from pink to blue.

They took lunch early, in the white gazebo, and wandered to the water by the steps.

Suzaku said, gazing out at the pond-mirror, "You really do want me to act as your sword. Even if that sword eventually is what will kill you. Even if that sword will break the moment that it does so."

Lelouch replied, "That is correct."

"I didn't realize that agreeing to be your knight meant wading through such an emotional mire."

Lelouch's hands twitched; he had clasped them. Then, instead of tighten up, he loosened his posture and chose just to laugh. A melancholy sound that wafted away on the breeze.

It matched Suzaku's wry and narrow smile.

"Suzaku," he breathed, "what you see as a mire is the path we both will navigate through, in order to win. It's the required route to our redemption. If that makes this seem harsh at times, it's only because in the long run, we'll reach better peace with ourselves for having waded through it."

He hoped Suzaku understood. They could not afford loose ends at the end of their journey through all their gray matter. If they would be dying, closure was required. Lelouch didn't look at him.

"I understand," Suzaku said, "and it was wrong of me to forget the larger picture in the moment."

Lelouch smiled thinly. Suzaku was apologizing for seeming to go back on his part of Requiem. "But?"

"But, I don't intend to let you blur the lines. It's either I'm your knight only and I'm going to finish you—"

"Or you can't bring yourself to do it." Lelouch said, "That's regrettable. But I completely understand. Feel free to adopt whatever mindset necessary in order to prepare yourself for what I may request of you."

Friendship, then, would stall out here, like a vehicle that hungered after fuel. No driving, when the vessel in the engine was left empty….

Perhaps 'an empty vessel' now described both of their souls.

"Then, I formally accept my role as it pertains to Zero Requiem."

Lelouch looked over, slackening in surprise. Suzaku had dipped into a bow – the lowest bow he'd dared to yet.

Lelouch reflected that Suzaku had still never gone to his knees.

_Yet better late than never_ , _to have any of Suzaku's consent_. Lelouch breathed easy, finally. There would be no more regrets or hesitations; those were weights. With weights like those dragging Suzaku down, Suzaku would keep wavering. A wavering Suzaku could not act as Lelouch's pillar. Lelouch needed Suzaku for defense and support. Suzaku needed to do all he could to ensure that Lelouch didn't run away crying.

Suzaku straightened. Suzaku finally understood it. He and Lelouch had at last reached a compromise.

All would progress toward the future from here, now that they'd finally conquered their present.

"The real work is yet to come," Lelouch said, listening to the calm and steady lapping water. "I am about to spill a sea of blood. Enough blood to wipe all memory of the massacre princess out of people's minds."

He hadn't told Suzaku that until now. Suzaku murmured his name in surprise. Lelouch wanted to say, _What did you think? Suzaku, out of everyone, I'm doing this for you._

"We've both lost much. Far, far too much. But to advance toward the future, we need to take over the world."

And Lelouch couldn't help but chuckle, because he'd just made a preposterous statement. Suzaku, with his firm knight's manners, had the grace to refrain from any comment.

C.C. and Lloyd rode up beside them. Lelouch's phone rang almost as soon as they'd dismounted.

He listened, while the horses slurped up water. He hung up, looking at once at Suzaku.

"What is it?" Suzaku asked.

"The time for the next phase is now. The Knights of Rounds are coming," Lelouch said. "Bismark's leading them." Lelouch paid no mind to Lloyd or to C.C.. "Live on, Suzaku," he said. "Act as my sword and work toward Requiem. The Lancelot Albion is the only Knightmare frame able to beat them… and I need you. I need you more than you possibly know."

_May we get out of this alive,_ he thought, assessing Suzaku. They galloped toward the hangar, with his knight's horse streaming in the lead. _I'd like another stretch of days with him… before I really have to die._

Something in him quivered when they left their steeds and went inside. Perhaps the vessel wasn't truly empty. Perhaps they would always deny implications.

"Suzaku—"

Lloyd and C.C. went ahead.

Lelouch's façade had cracked before Suzaku for the first real time.

Suzaku took one look at his pinched face and said, "I'm not going to fail. Your Majesty, I'm coming back. If you don't trust me, then just trust your Geass."

"I trust it. But Suzaku, the Knight of One—"

"Lelouch? I do have a favor to ask."

Lelouch had followed Suzaku toward his unit. Now he gripped the monitor Cécile was working on, the one down at Lancelot's feet. Suzaku was already mounting to the cockpit.

"What?" Lelouch said. His chest began pounding.

"I didn't feed Arthur before we left, so…."

"Arthur. Feed Arthur. That's it? Just feed Arthur?" Lelouch didn't know whether to be relieved.

Lloyd guffawed, C.C. and Cécile only murmured, and Lelouch turned pink like a young cherry blossom.

"I'm coming back," Suzaku mouthed, so that only Lelouch could read it on his lips.

Perhaps Suzaku's vessel – to the deep chagrin of both of them – was not completely empty, either.

Lelouch flushed more. He thought, _Even so._ What they must accomplish now was bigger than themselves. Their recovery and subsequent acceptance was what mattered. Later—

"The Tristan is with them," Cécile announced. "And their numbers are climbing, fast."

When Suzaku jumped in the Lancelot, Lelouch whirled. His robes followed him in great ripples, glinting, the same holy colors as the divine Knightmare frame.

Lelouch trusted Suzaku. If Suzaku promised he'd return, he would – whether as Lelouch's knight… or as a re-attempting friend.

He cast all aside but his will and his spite and hurried to the cameras, rehearsing the broadcast he'd force upon the world and Schneizel.


	15. Armor

If he'd hated himself for not answering Rivalz when Rivalz hailed him from the top of the fence… if he'd lingered over the warmth of Kallen's goodbye kiss that made him just as sad as she was… if he'd had time to feel sorry for the way he bullied Kaguya… Lelouch forgot it all when the bomb fell and wasted Pendragon.

Out of necessity – priority – he cast feelings aside. Everything Lelouch had arranged in the capital city, the FLEIJA blast disintegrated. Such a violent act could not be taken lightly. No.

But that was not the worst of it.

" _Tch!_ C.C. – why didn't you know about Nunnally!"

His sister lived.

She breathed. She wasn't dead. Nunnally _lived_ – but now she was a tool for Schneizel. Lelouch had little time to feel relieved or thunderstruck at the impossible blessing that was Nunnally, alive. Not when faced with such a perfect blow.

That Nunnally's heart still hammered didn't mean Lelouch could win it back.

He'd lied to her. Out of instinct, and duty. Worse yet, necessity _still_ dictated Lelouch shield himself, and by extension shield the world, by continuing to uphold lies. Schneizel had been listening in; it was Schneizel's fault Lelouch had not been able to cry out, _I missed you, Nunnally; and yes, I started this for you!_ For what of Requiem, if Lelouch let his shock – and selfishness, and love for his sister – control him? He'd known there was no other choice. Yet the more Lelouch raged afterward…. He felt wretched, deceiving her.

"I'm not a god," C.C. replied. "I don't know about anyone who's not connected to the Geass."

Lelouch sat down and scattered his chess set – and it was Suzaku who took the control.

A fist closed on Lelouch's clothing. Lelouch had never in his life been lifted by the collar off the floor.

"Our strategic objective hasn't changed. We can't stop this just because Nunnally's still alive!" Suzaku's voice rasped. Sandpaper. Lelouch looked at him in gut-deep surprise.

He'd never in his life been tossed like a ragdoll, into a heap, on his rump on the floor.

Suzaku showed not a thread of hesitancy, not a flicker of reserve in doing it. And he left Lelouch rumpled there, stunned.

It took Lelouch long to understand what had passed. But at last he did, alone, in the ticking post-moments.

_You have become everything I asked you to become. Everything that I insisted I wanted._ A knight who would remain steady, even if Lelouch began to waver. _Well done, my knight Suzaku._

Suzaku could not have done anything different, if he kept the promises made to Lelouch. In the silence, Lelouch laughed – a small, tight sound that rumbled not much farther than his chest. He allowed himself to unwind despite it. He coaxed himself into a careful coming-down. Lelouch rebuilt himself, slowly, with images and snippets of the only person left who – if nothing else – remained unafraid to question him.

Beautiful, newly-unshakable Suzaku… who had just left the room with a stride like a sage.

Perhaps it was wrong, to depend on his image, when they no longer called themselves friends. But Suzaku's strength was all Lelouch had left. Not even C.C. was acting whole now. Lelouch breathed, calling up the texture of brown, tousled hair and clinging to the wisps of it like slipping strands of sanity.

_Suzaku has learned to surpass me in the art of compartmentalizing._ It stung.

And how had such a thing occurred? Lelouch asked himself, rather than admitting he felt ashamed he couldn't keep up with his knight. He sat up straighter on the floor. Suzaku relied on stiff compartmentalization because Schneizel's cleverness and willingness to act had spiraled plans A and B out of control. Yes, they'd always had plan C – but plan C indicated they faced one of the worst possible outcomes. So heinous had Schneizel's latest blow been that even all-feeling, emotional Suzaku had been forced to don armor.

Lelouch tried not to reflect that the armor rivaled what Suzaku had relied on to oppose him in the Rounds.

_Suzaku, I know this isn't easy for you either._ And suddenly, Lelouch felt sorry for Suzaku. Sorry that Suzaku struggled hard to become steel… and sorry he felt sorry, like he was some shamefaced child. No one had a right to make Lelouch feel so undone…. A heat-rage banished the chill caused by the tiles.

He blamed Schneizel. Schneizel would pay.

Lelouch would ensure he made use of the perspective gained from within Suzaku's armor; he would demolish his damned older brother. Only then could Lelouch and Suzaku afford to feel again – and Lelouch, at least, would sorely like to live long enough for that to happen. After all, this was Nunnally. Lelouch did not want to have to play the part of heartless ruler even at the bitter end.

He tried not to think he might have no choice in it.

Lelouch shifted. _Armor, armor._ Yes, the right idea. He would recover, and he would win.

Why, then, did a part of him still feel so weak, exposed?

Lelouch looked at the door by which Suzaku and C.C. had exited. He swallowed, denying his unsubtle thirst. No, he couldn't think of seeking any kind of comfort, no matter how much he might wish for it. Suzaku wouldn't give it to him; that much was already proven. How much slack did Lelouch intend to force Suzaku to pick up for him, before he pulled himself together? Besides. He had the sinking feeling—

He stayed there for a moment, listening to the muffled sound of C.C. and Suzaku bickering in the Avalon's hallway. He tried not to focus on the pleasing timbre of Suzaku's voice. Suzaku hadn't seemed like he intended to sympathize with Lelouch whatsoever. There was no use in asking for what Suzaku would never give.

The certainty prompted the birth of decision.

Rightfully so, that Suzaku refused to coddle him. Lelouch took a breath, allowing his resolve to grow. He would regain his poise and his command. He stood up, wiping his features of every expression – except the ones he needed to act. It didn't matter that this time, no one stood by to scan him for composure. He'd do this for himself.

Reboot. Reset.

This time, take nothing for granted.

C.C. found him in the bedroom, head down, hands folded, meditating in heavy silence.

"No matter what angle I attack the problem from, the answer is always the same."

C.C. sat behind him on the bed. He kept speaking his thoughts aloud, when she insisted that he'd done enough.

"I can't treat Nunnally differently any more. We can't stop now, for the sake of all those who have died. Right, C.C.?" His words trembled, but he steadied them.

C.C. leaned against him. Took his hand. "Yes, that's right, Lelouch," she whispered.

And while she remained there, Lelouch stayed a man. He didn't weep. He didn't quake. They spoke no words. She felt warm at his side. Only when the silence had been broken by her rumbling stomach did C.C. rise. She gave a feeble smile.

"Would you like to gorge yourself on pizza with me?" The inquiry lacked all her regular drollness.

"I don't share your taste in that bad habit, glutton." It wasn't as dry as he'd wanted. He tried.

"I'll come back with any slices I don't eat."

"I'll prepare to go hungry, then, until tomorrow's breakfast."

The door slid closed. He watched her hair ripple behind her.

Lelouch sat for an hour, maybe two. He lost track of time, becoming one with the sounds of muffled movement in the other room, wondering over and over how successfully – and how long – a person could lie to himself. Could human beings ever overcome their nature, and employ rationality to fight the emotional typhoons that sought to drown them?

What he had chosen was right, and he knew it. But apparently that didn't mean he could convince himself to like it, or tell himself the inner turmoil was bound to end. Acceptance was a litter Lelouch did not yet have the strength to lift and bear.

He told himself he needed time.

He realized he had not the luxury of it.

In another hour, Lelouch went to get pizza. No sense in a physical decrepitude as well.

Suzaku looked up, from where he ignored his own dinner. The artful, pepperonied wedge of pizza – though balanced in his hand – slumped like a thawing snowman. Yet no telltale puffs of warmth steamed off around it.

How long had that wedge posed there, trying to tempt Suzaku's tightened mouth? Suzaku had left his huge cape somewhere else, but a thin coat of sweat and a faint greenness tinged him, as if an inward outrage or the cheese-scent curdled something unseen.

"Lelouch?"

His knight's surprise was almost tangible, and very worth the effort of Lelouch dragging himself out of the bedroom.

"What has Nina said about Pendragon?"

C.C. let a string of cheese flop down her face. She covered for Suzaku's hesitation. "That girl wasn't happy to be kidnapped by her idol's killer."

Lelouch said, "She'll straighten out. She knows the world is more important than an unrequited love that she clings on to from the past."

For some reason, C.C. dropped her eyes.

Suzaku looked away as well.

"It's the same kind of bomb," said Suzaku in a murmur. He sounded very… far away. "Someone has taken the limiter off it. Nina thought they couldn't do that."

"So the blast FLEIJA delivers now covers a greater range."

Suzaku stared at him again, as if Lelouch were a Jack-in-the-Box that would spring at the slightest inquiring touch. He couldn't fathom Lelouch's motivation under the circumstances, it appeared.

But it was a good thing Lelouch had come out.

"Eat, Suzaku. I need your strength up."

Suzaku returned his pizza to the box. "You're acting unlike yourself."

"On the contrary," Lelouch replied. _He_ was? "I'm exactly myself. I'm doing my utmost to nag you."

The hint of humor made Suzaku falter more. He shook himself and stood up from the couch, walking over to take Lelouch's arm.

C.C. sighed and went back to biting pizza.

"Lelouch, don't lie. You're really pale."

"I look no less a corpse than you."

"That's not the point. You can't just dance around the topic."

"I'm not going to topple, if you see fit to release me."

Suzaku's hand still gripped Lelouch's bicep. He didn't take the hinted order, but his hold remained a warning only. Soft. "After your outburst earlier, I just want to make sure that you're—fit to keep on, under these… new conditions." The halts, the hesitations in the sentence revealed Suzaku's burning lack of confidence in him.

Lelouch wrenched his arm away, annoyed that Suzaku had the gall to chastise him – and out of such misplaced concern. This was not Suzaku's armor. This was not compartmentalization.

Suzaku thought Lelouch's coping methods insufficient? Lelouch wanted to snap, _Isn't this good enough on short notice?_ What else was Lelouch supposed to do?

He thought of something, suddenly – but brushed it away with an inward note of caution.

They'd moved to one side of the room, behind the second couch where C.C. spread. She had turned on the television now. She knew there might be confrontation.

Lelouch determined to keep argument at bay, even if it meant Suzaku left from dinner disappointed in him. Lelouch could not afford to believe he was breaking – even if what Suzaku said were true. Before Lelouch slept, he had to speak to Nina, not resort to crumbling. He also ought to pinpoint Schneizel….

Suzaku shoved hands in his hair and raked it back, while sighing and turning away. The move seemed one of impulse, or affliction – and unsuited to him. Passive-aggressive. Unfamiliar.

Lelouch scanned Suzaku up and down – leisurely, as if perusal were a pleasure, and taken like a right after he'd been wrongly insulted. He said, low-pitched, "Suzaku, there's no need to check my status." His tone implied, _You ought to know already what I'm able to endure._

Hadn't Suzaku tested every limit Lelouch had by now? Lelouch remained aware, also, of the sexual suggestion that emerged behind his tone.

Lelouch would seize the remnants of their loophole if Suzaku forced him to it. Narrow as it had become, there yet remained the space to slip a precise needle through it. What methods did Lelouch have left, if Suzaku refused to trust him? How could they connect – how could they understand each other – unless Lelouch employed the only thread that they still had in common?

Thrumming, heated, underfed attraction. It manifested in miniscule motions, between the lines, within the cracks of conversations. Lelouch could sense Suzaku's breathing quicken, as the double-meaning of his message landed loudly. When Suzaku's chest rose and fell, Lelouch could feel influx of tension.

Then he couldn't help but fall a little prey himself.

His gaze trailed to Suzaku's lips, and Suzaku pinked slightly at the unabashed stare. "I'm in one piece," Lelouch continued gamely.

Suzaku muttered, "As fast as all that?"

"Perhaps your rough enthusiasm worked all the resistance out of me."

The words were slow and crept like worms. He could have referred to being tossed down. Or… to having once been indelicately – yet satisfyingly – fucked.

Suzaku stared, while the worm-words bored holes through him. The gaze he returned, however, was level. "That's just as well, Your Majesty."

And as the armor clasped again, Lelouch recalled wishing Suzaku didn't have to wear it.

All at once, he wearied of fighting against the tide of his emotions. He wearied of being forced to give up what small thrills he gained by teasing out attraction. Lelouch thought of the last resort that waited, hidden, in his bedroom.

He knew what he'd rather turn to. And so, Lelouch stretched out his hand.

In one last bid for an alternative, he dared to touch Suzaku Kururugi. The television blared; C.C. had given them some privacy with volume.

Lelouch let his fingers brush against Suzaku's cheek before Suzaku could stop him. His thumb wandered along Suzaku's lower lip, like he could wipe away Suzaku's frown. Suzaku twitched and let out a tiny sound, but Lelouch shushed him.

And leaned in, very slowly.

Centimeters from Suzaku's parted lips, he paused, and savored the moment between actions. He felt Suzaku's gasp when it slipped from him, the tingle in himself in response… that pushed him to anticipate things further.

But Lelouch didn't move in more. He waited.

He lived in the instant _before_ the decision, because he knew – perhaps better than Suzaku – that this decision did not belong to him.

_I don't intend to let you blur the lines._

_That's regrettable. But I completely understand._

The near-kiss worked out as Lelouch expected. Suzaku's hands – the warm fingers of the person Lelouch decreed must kill him – shot out for his clothes. Lelouch anticipated more abuse for the scruff of his collar, and he prepared himself by going stiff.

But Suzaku's manner managed to change.

The grip was just a warning, just a reminder of boundaries; he pushed Lelouch away with a face that showed only pain. "I'm sorry that you have to fight with Nunnally, Lelouch."

Lelouch stared. Then he released a shaky breath.

The words were not endorsement for Lelouch's bad behavior. They weren't permission, but Suzaku apologized about Nunnally because he wanted to.

Because he _understood_ , and he wanted to.

The reminder of the dregs inside the vessel that had held their friendship made Lelouch want nothing but to lean against Suzaku. To embrace him, or be held. Suzaku understood what Lelouch still suffered, and had taken time to grieve for it from his own tormented point of view. However briefly, however brusquely. To Suzaku, this fate-twist _mattered_.

Suzaku would have been Nunnally's perfect knight.

Suzaku could see the urge for physical comfort crossing Lelouch's face. As if suddenly realizing the way he'd drawn Lelouch in close, he flushed. He breathed inconsistently, fighting his own realizations of the pain they had in common, of the way it felt natural to gravitate toward each other physically in moments like this. He wet his lips to muffle a groan, and then, surprised again at his own sound, flushed even harder.

Mind degenerating once again to intimacy, Lelouch knew. How very long he'd watched Suzaku process. He'd learned to read each shift of Suzaku's face.

Lelouch let Suzaku's fingers quake against his chest as he withdrew. "When are we talking about this?"

"Not ever."

Lelouch blinked and looked away.

Taboo even to speak of, then, much less to do. Still. Lelouch tried not to sigh. Mere _mention_ of discussion sent Suzaku's inner guardsmen flying – to reinforce trenches, moats, and walls.

"Lelouch," C.C. called, interrupting, as if she'd only just noticed the tension. "It's late. Shall I come to bed next time there's a commercial?"

Suzaku said at once, "You should. Excuse me; I'm going to bed as well."

Lelouch said, "C.C., finish off the pizza. Then do as you please. You know you aren't under orders." Suzaku walked into the hall, without his cape. The door hissed shut behind him.

Lelouch went back inside the bedroom, pizzaless, but not the least bit hungry. He heard the common room door open and close again. The TV still burbled. C.C., springing up to go after Suzaku?

In time, the door opened again, and the TV went off – after a stretch of what Lelouch was still not sure were minutes or whole hours. He wondered what programs C.C. had been watching. Not the news, or he would have heard Milly's voice.

Milly Ashford, from the life he'd kissed goodbye. Lelouch's mind made circles. Goodbye. Goodbye kisses. Kallen. Bye.

C.C. didn't come to bed.

Lelouch hung his hat on the bedpost. Still in his white clothing, he lied down on the sheets.

He closed his eyes, but Lelouch couldn't sleep. All he saw was Schneizel, laughing. Nunnally, brows crinkled… so upset with him.

Shirley's smile. Shirley, dead.

Kallen's squared shoulders. Walking away.

Suzaku. Suzaku, always.

Lelouch climbed up again, sweaty, parched as if he needed water. Instead of going to fetch some, he crossed the room and took a box that held a needle out of a dark drawer.

_What will happen if the present disappears?_ Just for a while. Lelouch sat down and held it.

He came out of his reverie when voices spoke outside the door – his bedroom door – during night's darkest hours.

"I thought I told you that you have to be his shield."

Low. Enchanting. Lelouch listened, thinking that the sound of Suzaku's anger and betrayal aimed at someone _else_ for once was powerfully refreshing.

"Hah. What do you think I'm doing, standing here like this then, hmn? I'm not admiring the woodwork." The scuff of a foot. C.C. backing away. Despite her words, her voice sounded uncertain.

Had she been hesitating just outside Lelouch's room, poised like she'd knock, her knuckles unwilling to wake him?

Like a guard. His own immortal witch patrolman.

"He needs you, C.C.. I meant what I said. How long has he been alone tonight?" The sound of Suzaku's voice twisted quite finely, as if lower harp strings got tied into knots. "You forget – this involved _Nunnally_."

"You're the one that let him be alone, Suzaku – even if I understand your reasons. And if you think I have the option of forgetting who he's facing…." C.C. had used Suzaku's first name. She was either too weary or too concerned to rudely use his last, like normal. She sighed. "What are you doing now?"

Suzaku didn't answer, or Lelouch simply failed to hear the answer through the door. Whatever Suzaku's intentions were, Lelouch decided he would put a stop to them before they burgeoned. He put the object he held down.

He gave up on pretending to sleep. He walked toward the door in the almost-pitch dark, at the same time C.C. murmured a protest and it opened.

He caught only a glimpse of C.C.'s wide gold eyes, as Suzaku slipped inside and blocked his lovely witch from view.

And then Suzaku shut the door. His eyes were metal in the glow that emanated from the crack beneath it.

He didn't looked surprised to see Lelouch hovering there.

"Oh?" Lelouch spoke, before Suzaku could. "Are you ready at last to have that conversation?"

He watched Suzaku's eyes find his forearm and note that it was bared, marking that the sleeve lay rolled up.

"Which conversation?" Suzaku answered curtly.

"The one you prompt again, by your audacious entry into my bedroom. Without preface. In the night."

Suzaku didn't shift, appear flustered, or flush. His gaze sought out the bedside table that Lelouch had put the needle on.

Just like their night meeting, that time after fireworks and battle. All the same, except this time, Suzaku was _Lelouch's_ knight and not decked in the tailcoat of the Rounds. The darkness of Lelouch's bedroom, the vial full of clear and sparkling poison….

"I should have destroyed all your Refrain."

_Your own lack of common sense and foresight_. Lelouch said, "Yet you left me with it."

Surely Suzaku knew he hadn't used it. He could not believe Lelouch would open up Pandora's box. Not as long as Lelouch still could think clearly, could function enough to still speak without shaking.

This was not the lowest he could get.

"You're taking this hard, like I thought. You shouldn't have pretended to be fine. Lelouch—"

"Do not—" Lelouch snapped "—agitate me."

Nunnally was actually alive, but Lelouch couldn't have her; he still had to die.

To die, while Nunnally still carried on. Die, and never be around to watch her grow. Die, while she decided that she loathed him. Die, and know that she'd spit on his grave.

Lelouch still felt afraid of death. He always would, but worse… he'd changed his mind. His _desire_ to perish had flown. Thinking of his sister's life, he wanted – desperately – to live. He'd still go through with Zero Requiem, but full resolution would never return.

He'd never be _okay_ with this. No. Not as long as Nunnally—

But then.

Suzaku had barged into his room. Bad things might always become much worse. Tonight, there had been no one to warm his bed. Suppose it went on like that, in addition to his severed ties with Nunnally? Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Ever lonesome.

At that point he'd _wish_ again for death.

"I can't afford to lose myself," said Lelouch, when Suzaku only stood there, rigid. Suzaku obeyed orders, risking nothing via words. "And I don't intend to do anything stupid – not now that we've come this far. Leave me to myself, and I will feel better tomorrow. But I can no more bear all this tonight than I could murder her. Nunnally, Suzaku. With my own hands."

"Refrain's a cowardly escape—"

"Tonight, I'd hardly call its use escaping. It's a coping mechanism. It would be good stress relief."

Lelouch looked at his forearm. It was shaking. He walked to the table and scooped up the vial, gazing at the needle-gun that housed it.

"It'd be the fastest, most effective option." He held the Refrain up, its handle out.

He'd seen Suzaku looking ill over his pizza.

Suzaku flinched backward. "Don't even _think_ —"

"Not think. Just offer, Suzaku. It's an offer." He hadn't expected Suzaku to agree.

"Think about the Ghetto! Think of Kallen's mother! _Think_."

"I was thinking…" Lelouch replied, "…that I would like to think much less." He didn't care that Suzaku could see the rumpled mess of his king bed, loud in the background of his turmoil. He didn't ask Suzaku why he had come, what he had to report, what he wanted to say. He didn't push any taboo-riddled discussion. He merely let Suzaku fret.

Suzaku's habit was shooting down every method Lelouch used to forge peace in himself. Suzaku lashed out at every choice, but posed no alternate solutions that Lelouch could try himself.

_Hypocritical_.

Lelouch watched Suzaku scowling. _And completely, utterly expected_.

What would it do, to keep attempting to justify himself to someone as stubborn and short-sighted as Suzaku? Lelouch would die, and none of it would matter.

And the horror of knowing that now, in the present…. The present could yet disappear, in one discreet and painless dose. For a few hours, all that they argued about could be forgotten, set aside.

"Don't you understand, Suzaku, at least, why it's a strong temptation?"

Like baiting a tiger, Lelouch eased the Refrain toward his naked and white arm. Hovered over the vein that shined, to drive the point home visually.

The needle stayed an inch away. A light still flickered in Suzaku's eyes.

What would it be worth, to risk Suzaku's punishment by pushing him? By grinding at limits, provoking, or mocking? If Lelouch had a choice, between Refrain and what Suzaku held back from him… How far would Lelouch go – still – to secure the outlet he _wanted?_

"One night together," Lelouch exclaimed, trying to defer explosion even as he lit the fuse. "Just give me one night, Suzaku. With this Refrain, or without. Take your pick. But don't deny me any more. I'm learning I can't handle it."

Suzaku's look in the scant light answered well. The tightening around Suzaku's forehead meant his full refusal.

Lelouch was not surprised at all.

"Is this an ultimatum?" Suzaku asked.

Lelouch smiled an empty smile and leaned a hip against the bedside table. "It's just the truth. And certainly you know it. One dose of Refrain could bring both of us back tonight. We could forget who we are – who we have no choice but to be, to become – and just be instead who we _were_. For one night, if we want it back."

Suzaku stilled. He'd donned his cape again, to come here to disturb Lelouch. The cape did not so much as ripple as a silence fell on them.

Lelouch broke it. "Refrain even brings back the memories of strong sensations. Imagine the taste and the heat of our kisses."

Suzaku stalked to Lelouch's side, as if to put down some kind of ragged, feral animal. "You're out of control. This is inappropriate. As the emperor in charge—"

"I can't even have Nunnally!"

Lelouch's voice cracked on a high note. He didn't like that Suzaku got too close.

"That understanding won't ever not hurt! I have nobody left except you and C.C.. And yet, Suzaku, the least you could give me… the very least I can ask for, you insist on holding back."

He jerked away when Suzaku reached out.

"If a simple drug can return even a third of what I've lost, even for a moment, when I can't attain it for myself now _even in my lucid dreams_ —"

Suzaku snatched his wrist. "That's enough."

"—then _who are you to tell me that it's wrong?_ Even when I'm not planning to take it! You won't let me have _you_ instead—"

And Suzaku let him go again, repelled.

Lelouch knew he was losing this. He knew that he'd grown too tired, desperate. Suzaku would never forgive this. For Requiem, that was what Lelouch counted on. But for the sake of his own heart….

The vial slipped out of Lelouch's hand; it fell, and shattered on the floor. When Lelouch yanked his arm away from Suzaku's grip, he'd dropped it. Gone.

The liquid swept like a miasma underneath their stilling feet. Another silence.

Suzaku twitched and drew away. Then, very slowly, he moved back for the door. He paused when he stood positioned before it.

"Go." Lelouch gave him permission, emptily.

But Suzaku remained, long enough that Lelouch looked up one more time. "Remember something for me," Suzaku said.

Lelouch knew out of instinct that whatever thing it was would toss salt straight onto his wounds.

"The sexual relationship we had back then existed because _I too wanted to have it_. It always works two ways, Lelouch – but right now, only one of us still wants it."

Lelouch stood unsurprised, for the umpteenth time, and yet feeling like he'd been slapped.

"The two of us are through that way, Lelouch—"

"Suzaku—"

"—because I'm not a crutch." Suzaku's words were zipping blades, cutting through his protests. Cold. "I never used what we had like a tool. I won't let you take it so lightly either. Intimacy with me is not – nor has it ever been meant to be used as – a distraction. I'm not a diversion, or a convenient escape. I am not your vial of Refrain."

"Suzaku."

_Of course you're not._ The words stuck like paste in Lelouch's throat.

Suzaku was more than a distraction or a crutch. Suzaku was the thickest buttress holding Lelouch up – not a two-inch walking stick. Plus… didn't the help Suzaku already gave Lelouch as Lelouch's knight belie what Suzaku now sought to express?

Was there actually a difference in the type of favor Lelouch currently asked, versus what he'd asked of Suzaku before? Fighting and killing and _living_ for Lelouch was equally as esteemed, necessary, and morbid as appeasing Lelouch's appetite for intimacy. Wasn't it? Fulfillment of _both_ needs would enable Lelouch to move forward.

Suzaku quietly opened the door.

What was wrong with asking favors from the ones you cared about? Wasn't to care about someone also to need them?

Were relationships not about giving and taking, no matter what label got slapped onto them?

Lelouch leaned, unsteady, on the disturbed surface of his bed. Suzaku thought Lelouch didn't value him enough. Suzaku thought Lelouch still didn't care, or sought simply to take advantage, to amuse himself – or worse, to give himself something to hide behind. How could Lelouch… when he was this weak…. How could Lelouch make Suzaku understand?

How, without driving Suzaku away more?

How, if attraction made Suzaku mad?

Suzaku took a soft step out the door.

_Make a move, now – even if there isn't one. The king has to lead. Otherwise, no one can follow…._ But Lelouch stood there, in knots.

Another delicate thread snapped between them.

"The Damocles won't wait," Suzaku said. "In three hours, it's morning. We have to do something."

Lelouch whispered, distant. "Yes."

"If I were you, I'd try to rest."

Almost inaudible volume, then. "Yes."

Suzaku left without even _Your Majesty_ , closing the door like he shut it on a sleeping child. And, just like a child, Lelouch wanted nothing but to cry.

C.C. knocked and came inside. Not a moment too soon. Lelouch fell into her arms.

He slept a fitful half-hour at her side, got up, groomed, and left his bedroom, wearing armor newly formed.

* * *

Before Lelouch delivered his war speech – winged sword in hand – and lunged to meet Schneizel, Suzaku gestured him aside.

"I'm not your crutch, Lelouch," he said. "But I'm still your sword. You know that, right?"

"I do, and I'll rely on you."

Suzaku gave him a formal bow. They went separate ways, to begin their attack.

There was nothing he and Suzaku could not achieve together. Nothing – but the price ended up more than what Lelouch had in his budget.

Her eyes.

_I love you, Nunnally._

And ears that hadn't registered him say it.

Lelouch stood like a pin upon the world map; its lights cast him in shadows as those who witnessed it shuddered. Lelouch was the center of earth, now. Leader. God. The ruler. The Damocles had fallen.

This great, battered planet now belonged to him, not Schneizel.

And Lelouch didn't want to have to fix it any more.

* * *

He returned groundward, heavy hearted, with Schneizel trailing docilely behind him. He counted the beats between slow, weary steps. He didn't speak, when the crew of Damocles disembarked the shuttle and tried to address him. Lelouch did extremely little.

Until he was told of the state of his knight.

Then Lelouch ran, for the second time that day, down and up stairs faster than he ever had for cats upon a roof, or for the purpose of reaching his sister. His feet made rapid rhythms on the floor in all the halls.

He burst into the infirmary, so hurriedly Cécile jumped.

"Is he—?"

"I don't know any more."

Cécile was holding Suzaku's hand. He wasn't dead – of course Suzaku wasn't – he'd promised he'd live on and trust in the Geass – but he didn't _look_ living from where he lied.

Suzaku looked waxen, ashy. As still and calm as Diethard had been, lying slain where Lelouch could smell the death. A thick, organic smell. Not antiseptic, like in here.

Lelouch's sharp gut-twist was not for dead Diethard.

Lloyd lounged on the window seat, slouching in a way that made him fold like someone's irritable lawn chair. "I think the parts are all worn out."

"How worn?" asked Lelouch. He snatched Suzaku's hand.

Cécile stood up and let him have the chair.

Cold. So cold, Suzaku's hand. Lelouch rubbed it and swallowed, hard. "Kallen fought him. She couldn't have done any permanent damage."

"Lakshata's devicer? She's as good as he is. She had an advantage, though." Lloyd sounded bitter. "To have such a machine…. She could have done whatever damage she wanted, and then some. Wouldn't you agree, Cécile?"

"Advantage? Kallen? Suzaku had the Geass." Lelouch tried not to choke it. He looked at Cécile, who quickly glanced away. "Suzaku is the best Knightmare pilot there is." The two in the room answered nothing to that.

Lelouch had expected Kallen to survive. To fight, to win, to terrorize. She always had; none could counter her style of attack when she strove for a thing that she truly believed in. Lelouch had expected nothing less than Kallen's best, and Kallen's best was impossibly fine. But _Suzaku's_ impossibility gave him the true advantage—

He asked the question that burned in his brain, despite that he already surmised the response.

"Is he sleeping?"

"He's—" Cécile stopped.

"I see. He's comatose." Lelouch wiped his whole face incredibly blank. "Say no more." He dropped Suzaku's hand.

"They… they don't expect the coma will last long."

What Lelouch did not have was endless time. He fought the vicious sorrow rising in him.

"He might have gone farther if you had been careful," said Lloyd, when Lelouch answered nothing to Cécile. "But both of you just disregard the limits. I warned him something bad might happen this time around, after I watched the soldiers you Geassed. What I wanted to say to him was, 'It's bound to kill you.' But that's not accurate any more, is it. I don't understand his changed parts. Not at all."

Cécile said gently, "Lloyd…."

"Ahh! Where will we get a new devicer? It's worse than dying in a hard drive crash! He's stuck in sleep mode, still with all his data, but none of us can find the wake-up password!"

"Lloyd," Cécile murmured.

Lelouch uttered nothing. He stared at the sheets that draped Suzaku's lap, refusing to blink despite the harshness of the room's fluorescent lighting. An itch started behind his eyes. A burn. His chest felt squeezed. A lot.

Lloyd reached out a shoe to prod the outline of Suzaku's thigh. " 'Pudding.'"

A swift explosion sounded in the form of sucked-in breath. "Lloyd! _So help me,_ if you can't grow manners—"

"Cécile," Lelouch said at once. "Would you go make some tea?"

"Ahaa!" Lloyd ducked in ample time. "Good idea. Don't use coriander."

Cécile smoothed her skirt and took a breath. Then Lelouch heard Lloyd's long shoes, scuffing as he whined about the violence being done to his left ear. Lelouch wished he could ask Suzaku, _Were these two so sincerely worth sparing?_ It called his mind back to a past time, when both adults had caught them kissing – touching, moaning – in the storehouse.

Neither adult had ever said a word.

And Milly had tolerated Lloyd's informal courting and outlandish personality.

Lelouch turned in time to see Cécile look solemn, as she pushed Lloyd from the room. When the door clicked shut behind them, Lelouch set them aside, and looked only at Suzaku.

His loyal knight. Unmoving, broken.

Lelouch wrinkled both hands up hard; they appeared like pale, twin nutshells in the bed sheets. The temperature in the room felt too hot. Or maybe he himself felt faint.

Suzaku Kururugi, comatose. This was not what Lelouch wished, for someone he so dearly— He—

His skin prickled with itch beneath his robes; he'd run up flights and flights of stairs, Geassed his sister, and ruined his brother. He'd come back down to find Suzaku gone. Suddenly, his clothing seemed too much. The sweat he had shed made a layer that entrapped him.

Lelouch began to tear off layers. The emperor's hat, the sash-like belt, the cloak... and even the tunic beneath. He shed garments like an oak shedding leaves – until the grandeur about him had died and he became the skeletal, bare outline that he was. Lelouch.

Just Lelouch, in his plain pants and a white shirt.

He left his clothes in piles on the floor.

Lloyd opened the door and stuck his head back in. "Did you want to send for anyone?"

Lelouch made a waving gesture. Negative. He didn't trust himself to speak.

"Not even C.C.?" Cécile asked gently.

C.C. was there, outside the door. "Lelouch."

"Take care of what you must." He said no more. C.C. had his full permission to rule. The empress of their world of grief, she would clean up the after-mess, and keep what he'd acquired whole. He looked at her, to find her eyes round, hound-dog sad, and large.

C.C. had already known what he'd do.

He said it for the other two. "I'm staying here until he wakes."


	16. Hearts

He trusted C.C. and Jeremiah with the workings of the world. Lloyd and Cécile had both been locked away, along with Nina and the woman called Lakshata. Images needed to be upheld. When Suzaku did not awake, Lelouch could not put plans on hold. Everyone not integral to the latter pieces of the plan had to be moved aside, for him to be cast well as dictator. He knew at least Cécile would understand.

Lelouch went on, entirely alone.

Hours in the bright room passed, but gave no indication of the time. Sometimes he sat, with hands folded. Or paced. Sometimes he leaned near the window, as Lloyd had done on that first day. Lelouch always made sure the curtains were open. If Suzaku woke, let him see sun, or starlight.

But two sunsets passed, and their following days brought clouds outside; the weather moved in, inclement – as if to manifest the fear Lelouch denied when he thought, _if._

_If_ Suzaku woke, in time. _If_ the Geass hadn't morbidly backfired, in ways Lelouch had never dreamed. _If_ Suzaku was himself, when he awoke.

Lelouch had just wanted Suzaku to live. Live a long life, not exist as a vegetable, suspended a mocking hairsbreadth from true death. Cryogenic-looking slumber in a coma did not equal life. Lelouch made sure to disengage the glassy, tube-like cover that kept Suzaku sterile by entrapping him – two, sometimes three times a day, to remind them Suzaku was still part of this world.

It never fooled Lelouch for long. Just because Suzaku's heart was beating….

Lelouch laid a hand against Suzaku's chest, in one of the times he had the cover down. The gentle thud of Suzaku's heartbeat calmed him.

He didn't remember his grandparents' lives, but his mother had told him once she'd had to make a tough decision. "Let someone suffer," Marianne had asked, "or take it upon your own shoulders to end it?"

In the case of Euphemia, Lelouch hadn't thought twice. But with Suzaku, things were different.

Lelouch looked at Suzaku's slack, white face and wondered if he could pull the plug. What if pulling the plug shocked the Geass into action again, and Suzaku shot up with his eyes wide open?

Risky. Lelouch was unwilling to risk it. Geass was the power of kings, not of gods.

Lelouch brushed back the fringe of Suzaku's hair.

In times like that, when he knew not what to do, the room felt much too small, and yet he still refused to leave it.

Jeremiah told him, when he came to bring the news, "You need to rest."

Gottwald himself had been busy for days. Lelouch told him, "I intend to be here when he wakes."

Jeremiah stood near Suzaku's feet. "I don't believe that even Lady Marianne," he ventured, "would have worn herself down to this degree for her concern."

Lelouch slid a glance at him.

Jeremiah seemed to realize he'd made some mistake; he went silent, but there was no disguising the line between his eyebrows. Lelouch didn't fault Gottwald for being too traditional. He knew old habits died hard. Marianne had been loving toward all who worked with her, but terribly rigid in terms of proper stations, preferring to break protocol in privacy she fought for. Lelouch wondered how she had found the time to court his father and become pregnant with him. It must have been an exhilarating affair to carry out, before Charles legitimized it. Lelouch no longer took such pains with his own relationships. Who on earth could stop him now, from doing anything he wanted?

In addition to that, Lelouch had kept silent on all but the basics when he'd related Charles's defeat to those who had chosen to serve Lelouch next. Jeremiah did not know the adults Lelouch had confronted and uncovered.

He thought about the mothered he'd destroyed inside the World of C.

All he said was, "Jeremiah. My mother didn't know concern, even on the day she died. Also, this isn't concern."

"What is it, Your Majesty?"

"This is passion."

His voice didn't shake or falter. When Jeremiah bowed and left, Lelouch leaned in and touched Suzaku's cheek.

He didn't leave Suzaku's room for three more days.

On the fourth, he woke to fingers in his hair. Stroking, easing. Lelouch stirred.

"Did you miss me?" asked a voice he'd feared he'd never hear again. The voice added, "I kept having weird dreams."

Lelouch composed himself. He didn't rise. He kept his head nested between his arms, atop the bed as he had fallen hours ago.

"You missed your ceremony," he said into Suzaku's covers. "While you were asleep, you got buried. And given a headstone." He couldn't believe that Suzaku was awake. He refused to let this be a dream; he refused to sneak a glance or rise. Lelouch would say anything to keep those fingers drifting through his hair. What if he looked up, and none of it were real?

"While _you_ were asleep, you looked grouchy and tired." Suzaku moved underneath the covers. Lelouch found the motion real enough, and his heart began roughly pounding. "And I bet that nobody went to my funeral. It's fine, Lelouch. Remember? Zero Requiem."

Suzaku went quiet for a moment, and Lelouch also failed to make a sound. Suzaku's voice dropped the next time he spoke.

"My ceremony. Plan B happened? That means Kallen completely beat me. How long have I been passed out?"

"Rivalz went to your service, Suzaku, wearing his best," Lelouch muttered at the sheets, still caught on the fact that Suzaku was alive. "He left flowers. And Milly reported the event. And Arthur—"

"How long, Lelouch?" Suzaku replied.

"And Arthur meows at your grave every night."

Suzaku sighed. It was empty and dry. Lelouch could tell from just the sound that Suzaku could not see why they had to fool the cat. "I guess, at least, this means you won."

"We won, Suzaku. We did." The wisp of pride.

Thank god. Alive, and well. His knight.

"You beat Schneizel," Suzaku said brightly, wrapped still in the obvious.

"Checkmate. He acted predictably. And also… you and Kallen tied." Lelouch refused to give the match to her. Suzaku hadn't been killed; he'd survived.

Suzaku's hand retreated from Lelouch's hair, as if he finally came awake and realized what he'd been doing with it. On feeling the contact recede, Lelouch at last lifted his head.

Suzaku sat up soldier-straight, but relaxed through all the square lines of his shoulders. He studied Lelouch with content-crinkled eyes. Besides a little weak, he appeared all right.

Lelouch swallowed. No, more than all right. Vivid. Beautiful. _Alive_. But Lelouch wanted to fire questions. He wanted to ask if Suzaku were okay where Lelouch couldn't see, in those places inside. Places where his brain had shut down, and—

Suzaku grinned. "I hope you have Schneizel's defeat on video. Not fair, Kallen making me miss it."

Lelouch, for a moment, forgot everything but Suzaku's smile.

"Lelouch?" The smile ebbed suddenly. "What's wrong?" Suzaku's voice went high. Then low. "No. Don't tell me. Where is—" He nearly blanched.

"Ah – Nunnally is fine."

Suzaku's shoulders sagged extensively. "Don't you freak me out like that!" He tipped his head back, looking up at the ceiling. He breathed out carefully and shut his eyes.

But the fragmented relief that eased Suzaku did not ease Lelouch. It kept hitting – again, in waves. He shook, and looked away when Suzaku turned again to him to speak.

"It was you," Lelouch said, before Suzaku could ask. "You were comatose. About a week. I didn't think you'd— S- _Suzaku_ …." Lelouch swore he wouldn't cry.

Suzaku's eyes widened, first in wonder, then in horror as he realized what it meant. "I nearly died. Or, I – I should have. If it weren't for—" Suzaku stopped.

"Yes. Well. Best not to overanalyze it." Lelouch cleared his throat, and forced the chill out of his voice. For Suzaku's sake, he should sound more celebratory, not so scared. "It will only drive you mad. C.C. doesn't know anything, either." He recovered, in time to think back over Suzaku's reaction.

Lelouch had not been able to tell if Suzaku's response to his brush with death had carried hints of disappointment.

Suzaku sat there, staring at his hands. Then he said, "Well, it doesn't matter. For our sake, I'm back – and fine. I woke up normally, like I was just asleep. I dreamed."

Lelouch had to purse his lips and turn away, again. He wouldn't, wouldn't cry.

Suzaku touched him. "I'll heal in no time." Fingers directed Lelouch's chin, gently requesting that Emperor Lelouch give his recovering knight his eyes. "I wouldn't pick a time like now to back out of a thing like Requiem."

Lelouch had been about to slap Suzaku's hand away. Hug him. Kiss him. Give in; cry. Instead, words dried out on his lips, as Suzaku's gaze crossed with his.

"What?" Suzaku asked, frowning. "That's what's still important, right?"

Lelouch stood up without giving any warning. He left the room – and sent a nurse instead.

He ignored Suzaku when Suzaku called. He fled.

He found the library and picked a book.

Instantly, Lelouch lost himself in a blur of printed pages. He flipped thin leaves, digesting words, while all the while his heart pounded. He did not dare let himself think. Or react. Lelouch didn't want anything but to relish that fact that Suzaku was awake. The last thing he wanted to recall was what now lurked for them around the bend.

He read. He read until his eyes felt red, which wasn't long, considering the strain. He couldn't help the pressure in his head. The migraine forming, from his bottled-up emotions.

And soon enough, he realized he should shower. He should change his clothes, and tell C.C. she didn't have to order his troops around now. He'd order her a stuffed-crust pizza.

Lelouch went to the shower first, letting the hot taps in his new emperor's quarters scald him. One of the maids he'd employed to replace his locked-up Sayoko asked why he'd left the infirmary, when Sir Kururugi had finally woken. She curiously laid his clothes.

Lelouch couldn't help but wish he didn't have to put the white things on.

"He asked me why you went," the woman probed.

"For dinner tonight, cook a Japanese dish." Lelouch went out. She didn't press.

He took a walk around the garden. It wasn't like the palace garden he'd lost after the FLEIJA hit Pendragon. Then again, this was Area 11. Just an outpost. Just an island. Worth it only for the Sakuradite mines.

Nobody here understood true Japan. Lelouch swore again to return it to glory by making sure he succeeded at his goals. Even if _he_ wouldn't be around to appreciate seeing Japan again respected, certainly somebody else would admire—

"Lelouch," Suzaku caught his wrist – startling him, when they passed in the back hall.

Suzaku headed to a steaming get-well dinner. Lelouch was glad to find his knight could walk.

But he wasn't ready to speak to Suzaku yet. He didn't want to eat, himself. Lelouch wanted at least a night—

Suzaku persisted, carefully. "Lelouch. I thought about wording my words. I didn't mean—"

"Except you did."

Suzaku looked like he'd been slapped.

"Or it was well-implied," Lelouch gave him. He gently tugged away his wrist. Suzaku hesitated, blocking the hall.

Suzaku had suggested – even if indirectly – that he believed Lelouch's presence at his bedside was because Lelouch worried for Requiem. As if Lelouch had even _thought_ what he'd do, if Suzaku failed to wake to bring about Lelouch's death! Lelouch would have been forced to find another man to kill him... _if_ he could convince himself Suzaku wouldn't wake after he died. To go without saying goodbye…. But in those days of Suzaku's coma, Lelouch had only begged in silence, _Come back._

Suzaku said, "I know what I implied. I didn't mean to. All I was really trying—"

"—to do was make certain that _I_ didn't think _you_ had forgotten our concern is Requiem."

Suzaku winced, but had the grace not to deny it, or even shift the hard lines of his face.

"Yes," said Lelouch. "I understand. You aren't wrong to remind us both to focus." He strove to truly mean the words he said. "It wouldn't be right to get lost in relief, or to start celebrating before this has ended. We have just one purpose with each other, don't we."

Suzaku parted his lips like he'd protest.

Lelouch said, "Suzaku, I understand. And no more than that is expected of you. I had no right to express dissatisfaction… or to leave your recovery to unfamiliar nurses. Allow me to apologize."

Rebuilding the knight and emperor roles quickly. Lelouch lifted Suzaku's hand to his lips.

Suzaku stood there, underneath a wall sconce, looking partly upset, partly irked, partly rapt. "Lelouch, stop. Why are you—? I—"

"Right now, it's you who deserves deference." Lelouch murmured, his mouth against Suzaku's knuckles. He didn't kneel, but he did bow his head. "Without your willingness to fight and live, I couldn't have taken Damocles from Schneizel. You truly are exceptional. There truly is nothing I can achieve without you."

"Stop it. Don't put extra distance between us."

"You don't want to blur the lines."

He let the statement settle in. Suzaku's face crumpled like paper bags.

"Knight of Zero." Lelouch worked a brief softness into his voice. "The last thing I want to do – and this close to the end – is lose you."

Suzaku jerked back his hand and stepped aside. He shook his head, biting his lip. "You're playing games now. That's not, I—"

"Dinner," Lelouch told him, "was made just the way you like it."

He left Suzaku in the hall, walking as he had from Nunnally after he'd slammed that gate. His face remained a swathe of steel… even though he'd seen the tears wetting Suzaku's eyes.

He didn't let it bother him that Suzaku didn't eat his dinner.

Lelouch failed to dominate over his emotions long, however. He didn't consume much other than coffee, didn't sleep. Despite it, he played his high role with finesse. The days passed, and acting got harder and harder, but Lelouch pushed himself, although he grew more determined not to die.

Nunnally had been moved into her prison. Lelouch heard she showed kindness to all her guards.

Resisting his base human urge to just _live_ – because Nunnally did, because Suzaku did, because Lelouch wanted to be near them – became a matter of finding the right distraction. Lelouch made sure he succeeded at control. He sought himself out a diversion when doubt hit, making sure his plans never involved Nunnally's cell or Suzaku. _Especially_ not Suzaku.

Despite not seeing Suzaku, Lelouch cultivated a habit he had thought impossible to pick up – even with proximity. He now repeatedly told himself to go and meet his deserved end.

Fear of that end plagued him still. Lelouch kept C.C. near his side.

"It's counterintuitive to come to me," she said. But she held him, and rocked him, while Lelouch clung to her clothing like a child. His teeth chattered; he felt as if he were being attacked by the size of the world. The scope of the universe dismayed him. What was his life, in the huge mess of time?

"It's hardly anything," his cool, immortal witch admitted.

"But will it be worth it?"

"What do you think, Lelouch?"

_Yes_ , he thought.

Yes, his sacrifice just _had_ to be worth it. Or Lelouch desperately wished it would be. Even if his short life shifted naught in terms of history…. What Lelouch could do for future lives, in the present – by ending his own – surely would mean something good, to somebody.

"People want to thrive, while they still have the time. They want to be happy, as long as they can. People need freedom to live. Love. And die." C.C. said nothing, and Lelouch went on. "I want a tomorrow that lets them do that. If I sacrifice my life, and even one person benefits, my time alive won't have been meaningless."

He'd always been prepared to accept dying, from the first day he'd murdered for Nunnally's sake. The scale had merely shifted now. It'd gotten larger, that was all.

"Yes, Lelouch," C.C. said, "that's right. Even if you can't help a tired witch die, even if you refused to let someone else pass who'd already decided not to live… you can guarantee better lives – futures – for billions of others by dying yourself. But you could also make improvements if you lived."

"It wouldn't be enough," Lelouch murmured to her. "Not enough. It isn't right, either by him or by me, until—"

"Hush," C.C. said. She would not make him say it.

_Until Suzaku decides that the time is right to kill me._

Lelouch endured. C.C. drained his bank account like not a thing had ever changed. Lelouch had never thought her pizza habit would become his only comfort. After a week, it began to work magic. He ate his first real meal in forty-eight hours – a fat slice of piping hot, pan crust Hawaiian.

The world was his – yes, truly his, and Schneizel locked away and placid. Lelouch allowed himself to operate with confidence again, as final pieces found their places. As aristocrats gave their fortunes to the poor, and nations signed treaties, and ghettos retreated. Not much was further required of him. The world would move on well without him. He knew it. Even if he stayed afraid of dying.

Lelouch accidentally napped – no, he _slept_ – for the first time in many days.

The fair afternoon found him on the lawn. He'd sat down, to muse and watch flocks of birds flutter. He'd wanted to give himself some time to think, to take in the scope of all he'd accomplished. The sum of his life, this. And was he content? Apparently, though, he had lost track of time. He'd fallen into slumber, deep.

Lelouch, waking up, blinked, and slowly he rose.

Strands of grass clung to his hands and face. He brushed them off. The lines they made on skin would disappear in time, but grass stains on his robes were a horror quite unacceptable. He felt the weight of something rich slide off him, and promptly absorbed the rest of his surroundings.

Suzaku's Knight of Zero cape had been carefully draped on him. Lelouch fingered its golden edge. Even more a surprise than that, his knight himself laid lost in dreams beside him.

Harrowingly beautiful.

"Suzaku."

Lelouch wanted to wake Suzaku up. Gently. Let him rise to the calming lap of water in the decorative pool. To the even more calming sight of a rested emperor who wouldn't instantly harangue him. But footsteps crossed the lawn just then, and Suzaku stirred on his own.

Jeremiah Gottwald and C.C. wandered closer.

"My, my, what a sight. Is this proper?"

C.C. answered Jeremiah unbidden. "If you like your private life outside."

Suzaku was upright now, knuckling his eyes. He shook himself into a semblance of knighthood, as Lelouch smoothed his robes and said, for Suzaku's sake, "Your assumptions are wrong."

"What is it?" Suzaku asked Jeremiah, all business.

Lelouch wished he'd had more time to watch Suzaku sleeping. Blessedly different, Suzaku's real slumber, from the stillness of a coma.

"If there's anything wrong with the troops, then just tell me. I'll go to them and—"

"You drill them too hard. I will take care of it," Jeremiah said. "Running yourself down running _them_ down benefits nobody, Sir Kururugi."

Lelouch appreciated Jeremiah's strictness this time. Suzaku only frowned, but C.C. exclaimed, "Kururugi, you promised me pizza."

"I forgot." Suzaku twitched. "You just _had_ some."

"You do need rest, if you think 'some' is enough for a woman of stomach. Moreover, have you forgotten you're dead? You can't do anything. And strain—"

"Is nothing more than what Lelouch requires. Please let me do what I still can, C.C.. I'm capable of remaining his sword."

They spoke like Lelouch wasn't there. Lelouch concealed both alarm and fascination. He wondered when Suzaku and C.C. had become familiar enough not just to bicker, but to look out for and then plead with each other. Had the change occurred before his eyes, and he been too preoccupied to note it?

"I want to help ease the burden," Suzaku said. He turned to Lelouch. "If His Majesty wishes—"

"I don't need to nap any more, Suzaku. And you don't need the men to train."

Lelouch let no one help him up. He told Suzaku to change his clothes, that they might take dinner alone together. He gave Jeremiah and C.C. a night off. Before C.C. left, she smirked at him.

It was the first time in ages she'd smiled. Lelouch denied her the pleasure of a flushed response at whatever she implied.

He and Suzaku dined mostly in silence, occasionally commenting on the filleted salmon, or on memories of their class days Ashford. Light talk, to try to ease their heavy burden. Lelouch let Arthur lap milk from a silver bowl upon the table, because it made Suzaku happy. He said nothing when Arthur's fur drifted into their salmon's maple glaze.

It wasn't perfect. But how could it be? Perfect was for people less tarnished than they.

Dinner had concluded neither too early nor too late, a strategic affair of Lelouch's aiming. Lelouch didn't plan to spend time with Suzaku. Lately, he staged only enough interaction to keep their emperor-and-knight relationship intact. Never more, and never less. He made no moves beyond the line. Suzaku didn't seek Lelouch out, either, unless he had a question, or news of a new rebellion Jeremiah had put down. If Suzaku went stir-crazy pretending to be dead, Lelouch heard not a whisper of it. He did not let it concern him.

He spent time in the maze of gardens. He spent time in the library. He wanted to go out and browse a mall, or ride the train. He didn't dare ask Suzaku to don a disguise and drive Guinevere down to the sea, when Suzaku found her in a small garage. Lelouch was hardly necessary as an overseer, despite being ruler; he'd made arrangements for his exit far too well. Even so, he forged a hundred errands. A hundred distractions to challenge himself. He played chess for fun, and not for battle tactics. He ate a whole pint of black cherry ice cream.

After another few days, Suzaku caught him strolling in the art gallery. The one Clovis had so neatly instituted.

Startled green eyes clashed with purple. "I was just thinking about you," Suzaku said. Then Suzaku sealed his mouth and looked away, at a portrait of Cornelia. "I-I'm sorry. That was—"

"Stay."

Suzaku's hands twitched – forming fists, relaxing. Lightly forming fists again.

Lelouch maintained a perfect calm. He looked at the painting of his sister. Her outfit looked awful, a conflict of colors. "I think of you often. Daily. By the hour."

Suzaku groaned. Precarious. "Lelouch…."

Lelouch's tone stayed even. "Come here."

Suzaku gave himself a shake. After a moment, that was all. It seemed the command had made a bird of him – one that had flown into the glass of a closed window.

Lelouch said, even more softly, "Come here."

Suzaku came closer, now pursing his lips. He stood at attention, in front of his liege. It occurred to Lelouch that Suzaku wasn't breathing, but Lelouch let the observation slide. Suzaku would have to take a breath eventually.

Lelouch looked his knight up and down. Close up, the velvety drape of Suzaku's cape captivated him; the textures jumped out, potent. Engrossing.

He touched the fabric where it rippled. He ran hands along the armor pieces at the shoulders. "You still haven't said a word about this outfit."

Suzaku was finally forced to breathe. "What was it you were expecting to hear?" His voice vibrated – strained, cautious, and cracked.

"Perhaps, 'The cape is cumbersome.'" Lelouch brushed the cape behind Suzaku's shoulders. "Or, 'The long gloves don't stay up when I move.'" He touched Suzaku's arms, at those biceps, and swallowed.

A pulse fluttered fast in Suzaku's throat. "It's more like, 'Does my butt stand out too much now, with these thigh-high boots?'"

Lelouch faltered, astounded. And then—

_Slowly._

"Well," Lelouch breathed. "They do draw the eye. On you especially, they're quite… appealing." He wondered if Suzaku could hear his voice thicken, as the sight of Suzaku now in said boots roused a longing that caught in his throat. And dipped deeper, like a spoon in ganache. Dark, and rich… but above all, bittersweet.

He found that he'd been gently backed against the nearest column.

Suzaku's hand drifted against the silk white of Lelouch's hip. But then Suzaku blinked, and though he didn't draw away—

Lelouch made the plea for them both. " _Suzaku_."

At once, on command – at long last – Suzaku acted.

Suzaku leaned in; he caught Lelouch's chin. He _yielded_. They kissed – against the wide, white, Doric column. And with a little broken sound that Lelouch matched – a hitch of breath – Suzaku was slaking their shared, denied lust.

Out of eyesight and earshot of the guardsmen, and recklessly, Suzaku applied himself to kissing him. Lelouch, shaking hard, returned the kiss and built it – until the sensations crescendoed like in long-rehearsed orchestra music.

Dynamic and resonant. Familiar. They kissed the way they once had, when there had been passion – now gentling into a slow melody of ardor, now cresting, now clashing in a roll of lips and teeth and tongue. Lelouch's hands skimmed across Suzaku's cheeks, clung to his neck, fisted deep in his hair.

"Suzaku—" Lelouch got kissed quiet. But no battle for power or for domination raged here. Neither of them fought with any real resistance. Suzaku's hand slipped underneath Lelouch's clothing, not by force or accident.

Lelouch let the butterflies this time consume him, reeling, feeling weak, but also ravenous and driven. His thoughts melted before the heat of beating wings. "Yes," he gasped, fluttering his eyes when Suzaku ran fingers down him. He traced the gilded pattern across Suzaku's chest in kind, all while he still responded to the never-ending kiss. "Mmhn… _mmn—"_

"But not right here." And as Suzaku spoke, it ended. Lelouch gave a start.

It wasn't denial. Only caution.

And so like him. Lelouch tried not to fidget.

He wanted to take Suzaku on the floor, discretion be damned, for who cared if eyes fell on them? Why had Lelouch Geassed an entire retinue, if not to account for mad urges like this?

This was everything Lelouch had ached to do, since the day Suzaku woke. Since long before then. Since forever.

He could not think of a better way to spend his final days than this.

"Not here," Suzaku repeated bluntly, and the pleading in his eyes moved Lelouch out of annoyance and into complicity. It wasn't that Suzaku _wanted_ to stop.

Lelouch's voice broke. "But if not, _where?_ " He knew Suzaku could already sense that both of their bedrooms were too far away.

"I think—"

Lelouch started kissing his throat.

"—think we—"

Tugging Suzaku's belt to one side.

Suzaku murmured one sharp word he never, ever did. Something obscene.

"Yes. That's what I want to do," Lelouch said hoarsely, touching him. "Right now, with you. Alone or here. But Suzaku," he rasped, "I need—"

Suzaku knew the need. "This way."

They left the gallery. Swift. Unseen… save by a few, who nodded when they passed. Lelouch wondered if they suspected his sense had become one of Lloyd's favorite puddings. He couldn't focus on the way they sped the halls, for every atom in him thrummed—

Suzaku swept around a corner, in the lead, looking fantastic, sharp, and knightly.

"I wish I had left off the cape." Lelouch watched the article billow and shimmer. He doubly burned for the body beneath it.

Suzaku didn't speak or slow, but his fingers rose – to undo double clasps. The cape fell away – sloughed off there, in the hall.

Lelouch felt like a schoolboy. "Pftt!"

"Carine will think my ghost carried it there."

Suzaku blew past the article, with recklessness unlike himself.

Lelouch ached to say, _You're amazing this way. This confidence, this insolent demeanor…._ But they neared a door that led to the outside.

"The gardens?" Lelouch stalled for an instant.

"I don't know," Suzaku breathed. "But—the lilies. They're all… gold and white, like you. The water lilies on the pond are too. D-don't question decisions I'm making when I'm—" Silence.

Lelouch thought up a few good adjectives.

But lilies were funeral flowers. "Suzaku—"

Suzaku took him by the hand, and hauled him to a far, secluded corner. Hidden by one great, green spiral of hedges.

A stone fountain burbled inside, with lily pads riding its shallow pool. And in intricate, chiseled pots scattered around amongst the grass grew normal lilies. White and delicate, like frosting on pastries. In the grass itself, white clover bloomed, too – with an errant purple blossom now and then. They turned fat pom-pom heads toward the sun, alongside golden buttercups.

"I didn't know this spot was here."

"Me either. But I started coming here to think on how to deal with you."

Lelouch looked at Suzaku, then. Truly looked, as if he'd see what made a soul. On the tip of his tongue, two words struggled to unfurl. _Thank you_. Lelouch grew too self-conscious to express them.

_Deal with_ , Suzaku had said, but the tone had been fond. Suzaku _thought_ about him.

Maybe Suzaku would still do so, after Lelouch was long, long dead.

Suzaku exhaled a laugh. Sheepish. The laugh crinkled his eyes and made Lelouch want to poke Suzaku in the cheek. He hadn't forgotten the less wholesome urges below his belt, however. "You—"

"Shush," Suzaku murmured, catching Lelouch's wrist. He flamed like an ember. "Scold me later. Right now—"

Lelouch didn't want Suzaku's restraint anyway.

They fell in a tumble down onto the grass. Playful at first, Lelouch kissed, licked, and nipped. He found Suzaku's skin, Suzaku's hair, Suzaku's clothes. He hovered on top, until Suzaku tussled him to the bottom. Then Suzaku kept Lelouch pinned on his back, with thighs and hips flush against his.

Lelouch could manage much from there. He found hidden zippers and laid them to waste. He brushed fingers along Suzaku's navel, recalling himself to those perfect outlines. Suzaku retaliated where he could, letting his hands wander below Lelouch's waistline, tracing the dips below Lelouch's hips. All of the longing turned sharp again, real.

Lelouch moaned and caught up Suzaku closer. " _Yes._ "

Suzaku's breathing went erratic, short. He tugged Lelouch's white pants and his white briefs down, then dropped them in the grass. Lelouch's long robes still made silk waves around them. When Suzaku hooked his arms in the crooks of Lelouch's knees, Lelouch gasped.

The ease and speed with which Suzaku moved Lelouch into position made Lelouch want to give Suzaku everything. All. The sun beat down, hot; Suzaku burned even hotter.

"I can't be gentle with you." A last warning. "I'm too—"

Lelouch said, "I can't pretend to have earned 'gentle.'"

He looked into desire-ridden eyes. Suzaku nodded, cheeks still flushed. He'd already done away with the challenge posed by his own uniform and fly. Lelouch touched Suzaku's hip, and then—

" _Oh,_ " Lelouch breathed, when Suzaku's length nudged, and then slipped deep inside him. Lelouch felt half like he was dreaming. Except—

Suzaku slipped in deeper. Yes.

Every sensation that Lelouch remembered flooded back on Suzaku's first stroke. Swift and rough, sharply painful but perfect, all the right pressure and friction and angles. "Suzaku… nngh…! Ah, yes, _mmn…._ " He wrapped his legs around Suzaku's waist.

Suzaku let out a brief sob of release, and Lelouch choked on another, _yes._ Only a handful of thrusts had passed to ratchet up the feeling when Suzaku's skin began to gleam. He chanted, low. "Lelouch. Lelouch…."

Lelouch lost himself in Suzaku's commands. _Hold me tighter, closer—yes. Ah— Lelouch, god, you're... I want…._ Lelouch arched like a playing card, and clenched his muscles to make Suzaku moan. He canted his own hips to Suzaku's rhythm, heightening the friction to elicit twice the sounds. "That's it," Suzaku rewarded, aroused. "That's it, yes. Oh god, _Lelouch_ —"

It seemed they both would peak in seconds.

A few more thrusts led to a fit of confliction in which Suzaku, shuddering, pulled out. Lelouch dragged him down, stealing his mouth and sliding tongue to tongue, catching up Suzaku's erection alongside his own and pumping them, together. He worked them to a finish that took but an instant.

Suzaku broke the kiss on a cry, and buried it quickly in Lelouch's shoulder. Lelouch could feel him tremble, freeze – then break apart as if he were a tower under demolition. Lelouch's hard, precise strokes worked against Suzaku's last beams of support. Suzaku in his hand felt so _good_ , and so solid, even as Suzaku shouted out and spilled—

"Nng!" Lelouch winced as Suzaku bit his shoulder, locking onto skin with teeth and muffling the orgasm. Lelouch came too, in bursts that coursed their way back down to coat his hand, adding a delicious slippage to the rough, brief after-strokes. The pain of Suzaku's bite bloomed into pleasure, wild, possessive, extreme. Suzaku kept on rocking into his grip – and against Lelouch's length – until their release had run dry, and Lelouch again entertained the carnal thought that he would _kill_ to protect this. Suzaku. The experience of being with him.

Afterward, Suzaku collapsed, making a flat weight across Lelouch's chest. Lelouch realized he couldn't hear himself panting over the receding pound of his blood; he merely felt his chest heave up and down.

Suzaku's whole form had become limp and pliant. "Mmfgh," Suzaku said into the grass, after attempting unsuccessfully to rise.

The noise held distress, appreciation, and miles of awe that Lelouch knew he shared. "Is there a problem, Kururugi?" He lifted a knee into Suzaku's stomach. Suzaku groaned and rolled off him, Lelouch's very own pacific log. "Other than numerous stains on my clothes?"

A brief, embarrassed silence descended.

"Grass stains," Lelouch specified. The other stains he didn't mind.

Suzaku spread out and looked up at the sky. An occupied expression consumed him; he squinted at marshmallow clouds on pale blue. It became apparent that he didn't mean to speak, and even more apparent that he didn't plan to meet Lelouch's eyes.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm… deeply satisfied."

The breathy awe told him Suzaku meant it, but also that Suzaku too was deeply something else. Lelouch detected undertones of sentiment that he could not identify. He recalled with sudden sharpness that he'd blown responsibility. _Satisfied_ was not the same as _all right_ overall, was it. A disquiet rustled Lelouch's contentment. Every act like this took two; lines had been crossed, and Suzaku—

"Your Majesty…?" A call from far.

Lelouch said, "What does Orange want?" Some things would never, ever change.

Suzaku had already sprung to his feet. He tucked himself away, giving special care to smoothing out all folds. A regrettable stiffness had worked back into his actions.

He'd become again a knight. He looked around at the mess of crushed clover and wrinkled white that was his emperor.

"Yes," Lelouch said wryly, propping himself on his elbows. "Fix your hair. Just tell Gottwald—"

But Suzaku was off at once, and primping in purposeful motions while going. He tossed his head, as if the move could shake the flush out of his cheeks. Lelouch tried not to reflect that Suzaku looked starker than the situation called for.

He remained flat in the flowers some minutes. Eventually, as he wove back to his quarters, he was forced to pause and reexamine what had happened. He wasn't sure how this turn had come to be. His karma had not earned reward, certainly. Lelouch stopped once, reliving the whole scene. Twice, just to gaze upon the sconces on the walls.

Suzaku had given in and crossed the lines. Lelouch had not deigned to stop him. What were the repercussions for this? His skin still burned with Suzaku's touch. Did he _care_ about the repercussions for this?

Sex with Suzaku had muddled his brain. Lelouch craved a warm cup of… something. A shower. All inside him had gone untied and giddy. He opened his bedroom door, letting it drift wide, to reflect the state of his mind.

"When your face does that, it makes me think world is ending." C.C. stood there like an anchor, to which all his furniture and objects remained fastened.

The piece of his room that kept everything grounded.

"It's already ended," Lelouch replied, deftly. "To create it new, first I've had to destroy."

She stayed there, with her arms limp at her sides. She made no comment about his mussed clothes, but she saw them, Lelouch recognized. He walked to the wardrobe without a beat, and silently began removing rumpled items.

He kept his face aimed well away from her. He didn't feel as if the world had ended now at all. In fact, after recent events, he felt like something new had birthed.

Would Lelouch have to kill that, too, to recreate the greater world?

"Lelouch. Are you about to die?"

The question rang out like a bell – sorrowful, yet oddly suited for the momentous shift occurring inside him. "I don't know my own timeline. I'm even less certain about it now. The choice is still Suzaku's, but…." He felt a jolt of fear for Requiem.

Ah, yes. Repercussions for pleasure indeed.

Panic note. Surely Suzaku wouldn't change his mind? They would both need to discuss—

C.C. crossed the room while Lelouch faltered, in the midst of trying to undress. Unfair, this war inside of him. Could Lelouch not simply _enjoy_ recent events? And yet. What had they dared begin, when the world lay in transition, and Lelouch didn't have much more time?

Just that morning, Jeremiah had gone out to quell an uproar. He'd called it one of the last real outbreaks of Lelouch's new reign….

The buttons on his tunic struggled with him. C.C. reached out to snatch his chin. A glint of pain collected in her eyes.

Lelouch didn't make C.C. demand aloud that he explain. "We had sex," he said, softly.

"I see. And was that necessary, or unwise?"

"For whom?" he asked C.C. slowly. If she felt concern for him, Lelouch felt it for himself twice as keenly. Certainly she must be able to surmise how this progression plagued him? Lelouch did not need or want her scolding.

C.C. didn't answer him.

It struck him that he had learned to read C.C. the way he had learned to read everyone – but now, with her current impassive expression, he didn't know what moods collected underneath her mask. It felt like they had jumped back into early contract time. Before he had dubbed her his impudent witch.

"You know how I feel about him," was all Lelouch prodded her with. He offered no petty excuses. He waited.

She astonished him further by turning away. "I know it, pervert. Does Kururugi?"

Lelouch stood thunderstruck. "I could repeat it," he said. "We had sex. _We_ ," he stressed.

Hadn't Lelouch made it painfully clear that regarding Suzaku, he desperately _cared?_ He'd held Suzaku, kissed him… and Suzaku had done it back. Lelouch felt… things. They made him driven, torn, and crazy. How else was he expected to express his mad attraction?

A thought hit him. The one C.C. might have meant him to find.

What did… what did _Suzaku_ feel? Sex…. For Suzaku, their intimacy might carry a different meaning. In fact, hadn't Suzaku always acknowledged his actions as the result of simple lust? What was their loophole, in the end, but manipulation of that carnal appetite? It wasn't like Lelouch had ever held the strings of Suzaku's heart.

He'd held Suzaku's friendship instead – but never more than that, and now the friendship thread had snapped. Part of the attraction that had always flown between them still depended on some caring, yes… but Suzaku's intention hadn't ever been to light that wood on fire.

Suzaku didn't _love_ him. Or couldn't. Because….

Lelouch shut the wardrobe, ill.

_Does it hurt? Is that why you're not sure you want to care?_

_If I decide to care again, how can I go through Zero Requiem?_

If Suzaku decided to feel, Suzaku believed those feelings would distinctly, sharply fail to matter in the face of the plan they had wrought, and Suzaku was not okay with that. It seemed to him futility. Did Lelouch blame Suzaku for thinking that way?

In Suzaku's eyes, Lelouch was already a dead man. Gone in every sense but literally now. If Lelouch were smart, he'd start seeing from the same perspective. Requiem was not going to stop for Lelouch's tendency toward pursuing affection; for him to indulge it regardless was selfish. Lelouch could not ask Suzaku to love him, to open himself up to extra pain that he did not deserve.

Asking Suzaku to kill him was enough.

Lelouch was now reminded of the hazard that was intimate involvement. Had sex been necessary, or unwise? Now he'd established the answer to that.

Lelouch knew. _He knew_ it was unwise. But why did it have to hurt this much – that they'd had steaming intercourse that felt so right? Why must it all be wrong?

They had both let something terrible happen. C.C. watched Lelouch breaking down the nightmare. What did he want – no Suzaku at all? Or a Suzaku he'd love and then lose?

Suzaku didn't want to lose, so he had given up before he'd tried.

Lelouch could do nothing to change that decision. He didn't want to cause Suzaku more pain.

C.C. walked away, to the window.

Lelouch would have to redraw lines. If he didn't, he would get tangled up worse. Imagine, allowing himself to be devoured by Suzaku's lust – Suzaku, who'd gone back on his word about indulging their attraction and given Lelouch a taste of heaven – and then still getting sent to hell by Suzaku the way Suzaku promised.

Twisted. And yet… the punishment Lelouch deserved. Even if Lelouch slammed doors shut now, he'd never forget the paradise he'd sighted. Was this the pang of true regret? Appropriate, considering the blood he'd shed, and all his lies. The onslaught of real redemption.

He didn't know why moisture wetted his eyes.

C.C. said, from where she gazed out of his blinds, "What will you do? Can you be anything but selfish?"

"Witch," he said, and glanced aside.

Some kind of disconnect had come between them, and Lelouch knew not how to bridge the gap. He didn't want to shoo her from his rooms without addressing her concerns.

"I won't let it go on," Lelouch exclaimed. He swallowed, not letting tears fall. He dumped his hat upon the bed. "Leave me. I'll need time to fix it."

He couldn't help that the words came out harsh. There was no way to erase what C.C. had made him realize.

No going back. No more hopes or dreams of an attraction.

"I still forget," C.C. murmured. "You're young."

"No," Lelouch said in a whisper, turning. He used a voice he knew she'd understand. "No, C.C.. I only look it from outside."

* * *

That night, Suzaku knocked on his door. "The butlers all ignored me in the hall."

"I made them think you're dead too," Lelouch said.

"That isn't fair. Do they do that to you?"

Lelouch let Suzaku inside. "I haven't died until you put me in the ground."

He went back to tucking his newly pressed laundry in drawers. He'd already cleaned up C.C.'s pizza. If Suzaku cringed upon hearing his words, Lelouch didn't see it.

Suzaku stood gamely near the tea table. "I wanted to ask them to get me something."

"Anything you need, you know I'm willing to provide."

"Oh? Even some nice champagne for yourself?"

Lelouch said, "What is it with you and nice champagne?" He shut a drawer and neatly latched it, recalling a lawn under twinkling lights. Recalling Suzaku, in a dress shirt and a tie.

The image that had been bone-chilling then was warm in retrospect. He glanced at what Suzaku was wearing now.

Suzaku, always with the urge to please him, by doing little favors, like serving him fine refreshment. Lelouch, always with burning appetite for something else.

Suzaku walked across the room, his gaze on Lelouch's own attire.

"You're in a kimono." Suzaku's lips twitched.

"I am. They're nice to lounge in, if you wear them like a bathrobe." He purposely made himself sound overly-Britannian. What should he have worn instead? All of the laundry had not been completed. Carine and Guinevere were not as fast at it as Sayoko.

Suzaku walked to his side. His lips murmured next to Lelouch's ear. "If you can't even wear it right, then maybe you should take it off." Then Suzaku caught him so he couldn't run or hide.

Lelouch's very clear, direct response astonished both of them. He let escape a curling, wanton whine.

Suzaku froze, his eyes blown wide. And then he swiftly moved away. "I'm sorry." Pale and serious. "I just—I came to talk. I really did."

"Over champagne?" Lelouch asked Suzaku, strained. He kept his body very still, poised like an art career depended on it.

Suzaku ran an appreciative stare along his pose, his gaze a little dark.

And then Suzaku shut his eyes.

Lelouch took the opportunity to dominate the conversation. "I am the person with something to say. What we are doing—" Lelouch forced control "—is wrong. It is only going to hurt, the longer that it carries on." He tried not to get frustrated. "You were not mistaken, to draw us a line. Kururugi Suzaku, you and I set a very clear-cut goal—"

"Do not—" Suzaku said, without warning "—agitate me."

The mood inside the bedroom changed.

Suzaku removed his emerald tie. He draped it on the little chair and sat down at the tea table. He looked as if he _craved_ champagne. Or something else entirely.

Lelouch sat on his bed – or dropped there, rather, knees having gone weak. His heartbeat skipped. What in…. What in—

"I'm not sure…" Suzaku began. And then he petered to a stop.

Lelouch realized that this was their discussion.

This was why Suzaku had come to him. At night, while they were all alone. Finally, they were to speak of the taboo. Lelouch no longer had to battle with it solo.

He swallowed and folded his hands on his lap, heart pounding like wheels on an over-heated steam engine. He would move for nothing, no one. Let the world explode. Lelouch would absolutely hear Suzaku's words.

Perhaps they could face down their ties as a team and succeed, as they did in all other endeavors. Perhaps Lelouch would not have to grind a heel alone into their still-alive attraction.

They could… put it down humanely.

Suzaku thought he was being mocked, when he saw Lelouch fold his hands and lean forward. He shot Lelouch a glare, and his words came out too high.

"I'm not sure any more what's going on. You were right – maybe even about the things I felt for Zero. I want you, Lelouch. Desperately. Yes, there's a plan that I've sworn myself to. Yes, I'm your knight. I don't think that we should let this happen either. I meant what I said about not using me, and I don't like the way you've always brushed my feelings to the side. But I've never felt so… perfect, before. Ever since this afternoon—"

Lelouch's throat had gone quite dry. Lelouch's hands had turned quite white, locked to each other like albino links of iron. He begged in silence of listening gods, _Don't let him say he wants it to go on._

Suzaku's hands were on the table, leaving magic imprints there. "Since this afternoon—" Suzaku wet his lips. "All I can think about is…."

He finished the thought with a helpless expression – one that ought to make Lelouch feel guilty and ashamed. Instead, a bolt of sharp desire shot to where it shouldn't go.

Such an acquiescent look on Suzaku aroused him; those searching green eyes acted as a stimulant. Lelouch wanted to give Suzaku gratification, immediately. He thought, _No, don't. The only choice is to resist._ But did he have the strength to fight, if Suzaku was telling him…?

Suzaku was telling Lelouch he'd liked the things they'd done. Suggesting he might still like more. Perhaps not more emotional investment, but more copulation. Suzaku had _thought_ about this. He'd broken it down, and decided to go where Lelouch thought he refused to go. What inside Suzaku's mind had changed? To suggest casting off their lines….

A spark kindled. But, no. No. _No._ Suzaku was the longest-steeping tea in all existence. He could not possibly have foreseen all repercussions—

Suzaku groaned and turned to him. "Why did this happen? Just tell me what you feel. Tell me what you want. And please don't lie."

Lelouch, called back from insanity's edge by Suzaku's vivid pleas, brushed his hair out of his eyes. He stared, a duck without feathers – exposed, chilly, awkward… with nowhere to fly.

Suzaku deferred to him. In _this._

Lelouch found he could not reply.

"Mn. All right." Suzaku got up from the chair. He scooped up his tie. He repeated, "All right."

Lelouch started, rising from the bed.

"If neither of us can decide, we probably shouldn't do a thing. That's what Shirley always said. Important decisions are made in an instant, using your heart. So if you can't make one… your heart isn't in it."

Lelouch faltered. Hearts. _Your heart._

"Euphy agreed with that sentiment too. For the first time, I'm relieved she isn't here. Because—" and Suzaku looked back. "I don't feel like we have hearts left. That would make Euphy very sad." Suzaku's smile expressed matching sorrow as he laid his hand upon the door.

No hearts left? No, that was wrong.

Lelouch had a heart, because it clenched when Suzaku announced he thought they lacked them. Suzaku had a heart still, too – because he was here, fighting for the very arrangement Lelouch had been so sure they couldn't have. Suzaku was here, heart _broken_ that it seemed they couldn't grasp a want they shared.

What did Suzaku really feel?

Suzaku nodded to himself, certain upon Lelouch's silence that the discussion had ended. Over. No more talking, no more pain.

Lelouch sprang fast to beat Suzaku to the door.

Suzaku paused, still calm – at first. "Let me leave. I won't pretend that nothing happened, or that I didn't like it, I promise. I did. That's why I—that's what was with the nice champagne. But I can be through, like you said, if we should. We shouldn't do something we'd only regret." His hand turned the brass doorknob, swift.

Finished. Suzaku would leave.

"Indeed," Lelouch said fiercely, then. He slammed the door when Suzaku tried to crack it.

He locked it, with the deftest of motions. "We shouldn't do something that we'd regret."

He seized Suzaku with shaking fingers, by the scruff of tousled hair.

Lelouch would only break from this. Doing this would mean Lelouch would never find real peace before he died. And yet, not just for his sake, but for people like Shirley and Euphy, who had only wanted to support them, he—

Lelouch wanted to love, although he'd lose.

Suzaku fought – but only halfway to the bed. They kissed – and hungrily, but it gentled into a caution. Lelouch employed an incredible care, even as he burned to release tension.

And the night spiraled off from there.

At first, Lelouch kept trying not to cry. So good, the touch of Suzaku's lips. He didn't want to make Suzaku break. Or break himself. But heat. It radiated, creating a space between them where temperatures rose to match desires, and soon he was far from crying. Better to have this, and die satisfied.

Yes. If Lelouch had to die lacking pieces, he'd die knowing he'd given them to Suzaku.

" _Mmn…._ " Suzaku licked the hollow of his throat, already gone, muttering about Lelouch's pleasing scent.

The kimono _did_ come off, eventually – but just to the waist, to match Suzaku's shirtlessness.

"I like you in dress shirts and pants," Lelouch said, just admiring the view.

Suzaku did not acknowledge that they'd paused. "I know," he announced, trailing lips down Lelouch's collarbone. "But I don't think kimonos suit you." He tried taking the rest of the blue, heron-printed fabric off.

Lelouch got to Suzaku's unzipped pants first. He pulled the boxer-briefs to Suzaku's knees and let Suzaku stay tangled, panting.

"Hey. That's no fair. I was busy, Lelouch."

Busy making Lelouch gasp. Too much, too fast, because Suzaku had passed the slot for playtime. He needed something more, and wasn't quite sure what.

Lelouch would give it to him.

He'd take in all the ways that Suzaku whimpered and shuddered. Lelouch ran his forefinger along Suzaku's bared erection, mesmerized by the familiar length and size. Come already pearling there…. Suzaku sank his teeth into his lower lip to crush a cry.

Lelouch would never not light up, to witness those hips shift in increments while Suzaku tried to keep them still. Suzaku's flush kept rising, high. Lelouch looked at him, splayed across the bed in tangled sheets, and his desire peaked.

He wanted to try something. A thing that had stayed in the back of his mind – a thing Lelouch had not believed he'd have the chance to try again. But as this night seemed one of pleasantly reversed expectations….

"What do you want?" he asked Suzaku coyly, just to give his knight a chance to choose his pleasure for himself.

Suzaku said, "Oh my god, I—"

And Lelouch knew, from that response, he had permission to do as he pleased.

He made Suzaku move to the edge of the bed, and failed to explain what the shift was about. He kissed Suzaku until Suzaku moaned into his mouth. Lelouch did not just have an urge – it was a need, as deeply woven into his fabric as threads were latticed together on a loom. Lelouch could no more stave off its fierceness than he could reverse time. He'd see Suzaku satisfied.

The blood rose to his face and burned; it radiated through his body so that Lelouch felt too suddenly parched. His lips parted as Suzaku reached out – to touch Lelouch, to try to take back some control – and a dry gasp left Lelouch's throat... but Lelouch's mouth grew slightly moist again.

Yes. His mouth watered – with the tantalizing image of what he was about to make of Suzaku. No matter that Suzaku tried to steer this, tried to rile him. That mess of lost control who shuddered at the slide of Lelouch's twirling tongue—

Lelouch hit his knees in seconds, caring nothing for the force with which they met the polished wood. They throbbed, there at the bedside – but pain, too, was a pleasure, when it came to undo Suzaku. Lelouch absorbed the moment from below with hooded eyes.

Suzaku comprehended. And Suzaku released a sound. It was not manly – was not gruff or deep at all – but Lelouch knew Suzaku incapable of seeming anything but the exquisite male he was. To think Suzaku became unmanned through acts like this was just faulty assumption. If anything, Lelouch would make him triply masculine….

Suzaku found English. "Wait. Wait, not—!"

Lelouch failed to halt at the ragged command. The instant the taste hit his tongue, he lost something he'd dearly needed to lose.

Everything Lelouch had been withholding, sacrificing, fighting against… everything he'd been relying on to bury all his own dark wants… Lelouch released.

Discretion. And his pride. Ethics, and restraint… he cast them aside. His lies and regrets. All his sadness and fright. Everything Lelouch had needed to let go of – to exist as himself, and not a man of masks... It fell away, as Lelouch applied his mouth to the raw, fantastic task he'd learned that he liked best.

It wasn't just a selfish satisfaction – or, if it was, it was because Lelouch enjoyed just giving. He craved the catharsis that came from proffering himself before the person he desired, instead of dealing out harm to one he so acutely, deeply loved. This way, Lelouch couldn't hurt Suzaku. He could not make Suzaku sad. Instead of degrading, opposing, manipulating, Lelouch could turn himself to Suzaku's contentment.

And how Lelouch lusted after Suzaku's contentment. After a Suzaku like this, when he was pliable, liquid, and vocal. Suzaku gasped, and canted narrow hips. Lelouch took Suzaku deeper without shyness. He stayed there on the floor, kneeling the way he never had – neck bared – for _anyone_ ; he let himself become a wanton thing for Suzaku's pleasure. Nothing more.

He knew Suzaku wouldn't think him easy for it. Suzaku was unable to do anything but whine. Suzaku's hands had knotted in Lelouch's hair. And even if Suzaku didn't last—

The taste of this would be enough, until Lelouch finally died. Lelouch hummed satisfaction around Suzaku's erect tip. This was the purest way to express his desire to raise Suzaku above himself. The clearest way to communicate – if only inside his own intricate mind – that he valued Suzaku Kururugi more than words could possibly relate.

Lelouch could give Suzaku this without either of them dismissing, disbelieving, or denying it.

_You are everything to me._

"Lelouch... Lelou—ah! Aahn, _god—_ "

Suzaku let loose a throaty moan. The sound said his world had just broken apart. He was gone; only Lelouch's aggressive pursuit of the finish could restore him to a normal human being once again.

Lelouch kept to his process with a wild, unfettered determination. He pulled back, and then went down on Suzaku again – licking and swirling his tongue around Suzaku's circumference, fast and wet. He ran his tongue along every vein and curve. Light at the tip, then hard over the base, the way he remembered that Suzaku liked it. Suzaku twisted and lost more composure.

Suzaku was getting incredibly close.

Lelouch moaned around him now, working Suzaku's length inside his mouth, rocked by the desire in himself that echoed alongside Suzaku's cries. Every dip of Lelouch's head, every slide of his mouth elicited a loud, responding sound. Every uncontrolled jerk Suzaku gave, every vibration Lelouch could feel tenfold inside himself. They _shared_ in this. There was nothing more intimate than this act that brought them both such matching pleasure.

Lelouch worked toward Suzaku's finish faster, daring to make light use of his teeth. Not too rough, no – just a little extra. Suzaku's hips bucked, and his thighs tightened up, and he broke into a mess of begging that Lelouch ignored, to take him deeper. Then Lelouch felt Suzaku rise with little warning—

He coughed. He wiped his mouth as Suzaku pulled away. "What—" breathless "—are you—?"

"Get down."

Suzaku dropped to the floor beside him, off the bed, and wrested Lelouch flat.

"You need to know what you're doing to me. No, shut up. I'll let you come. I'm going to _make_ you, so horribly hard. You'll see more rainbows than you did on Pride Day—"

" _Aahn!_ "

Suzaku took Lelouch in hand. He'd freed Lelouch from too-tight briefs, was pumping, stroking, rough and hard—

And then Suzaku's mouth was there – a hot, wet – _so_ wet, tight – persistent presence.

Sliding around Lelouch's aching erection. Tongue coating him in a slippery sheen that lent sensation to the motion. _Oh_ , _god—yes!—_ and hands shoved into Suzaku's hair.

He was going to sob. He was going to come. This was not appropriate for in-charge demon emperors. This was not supposed to— _he_ was supposed to, for _Suzaku_ —

Lelouch would come, the way Suzaku dipped, then stopped to husk nothings and go down the harder.

Lelouch sobbed and drew Suzaku closer. Suzaku kept up with Lelouch's commands. "M-more. _Like that_ , Suzaku. Yes—!" Suzaku slurped, and hummed, and choked a bit and didn't care. He recovered as Lelouch gave in to tears, rasping, _ohh, it's so good,_ and Suzaku let Lelouch's fingers guide him at the back of his neck.

Until Lelouch came. And he _came_.

Suzaku could have swallowed all. Lelouch could tell Suzaku was sorely tempted – a curiosity he well could understand himself. But Suzaku remembered a long ago sentence.

_I can think of other things I'd like to see all over your face…._

Suzaku pulled away just in time, and just enough that Lelouch released against Suzaku's parted lips. Against his cheeks. Across his licking tongue. Afterward, Suzaku darted out that tongue again to take a taste, a little one, where he could see. Lelouch dropped back on the hardwood, gone.

Rapt. Amazed. Completely gone.

Suzaku said, "I could do that again."

"S- _Su_ zaku!" The exclamation came out weak. Waves of Lelouch's orgasm receded, leaving him shuddering, sweating.

He happened to look into Suzaku's lap.

"Um," said Suzaku, wriggling away. Lelouch had to ask himself if he hallucinated. He could not stop gaping.

"Stop staring. It's just—"

A mess there, slick. Without him. Come.

But Lelouch hadn't finished Suzaku off. He'd thought he'd need to now. He wanted to. But Suzaku… had already—?

"You were a huge turn on." The explanation.

"Did you touch yourself, or did—did that just _happen?_ "

Suzaku mumbled, looking at the ceiling. "You're just… a huge turn on," he repeated.

"Suzaku, come here."

"Think I already did."

Lelouch of the Rubber Limbs found himself incapable of whacking Suzaku on the head.

At some point, they moved off of the floor.

Lelouch went to sleep, for the first time, with Suzaku Kururugi curled up in his king-sized bed.


	17. Dismissals

The next morning, Lelouch awoke to find Suzaku away from bed.

His first reaction was a bolt of panic. Had he dreamed their pleasure, only? His second reaction was a wince. Moving – even gingerly – aggravated an extremely localized pain that regular sleep didn't leave people with.

Lelouch flipped back the covers and sat up, resting both feet on the floor. _Gently_.

"Hn." He couldn't help it. He felt slightly amused.

The angry sensation in his hind region was not an unfamiliar one; Lelouch had experienced it once before, and learned that it was just like people said – and worse, because that time he'd gone and piloted the Shinkiro. Lelouch tensed himself and dared to stand. Having to orchestrate a battle as Zero had distracted him during that first experience, but this time, there'd be no such luck. He supposed he could look at it positively. Until this morning, he'd never had the luxury of lingering over the physical… residues of pleasure.

There were worse things than the after-pains that came from coupling with Suzaku twice more in the night.

Bathed in daylight, Lelouch thought of what they had done, and lingered on details. His skin warmed like a hide stretched out to tan. He turned his face from the window like he blamed the sunlight for his heat, and fiercely tried to clear his head.

It didn't work. Lelouch remembered it too keenly. They'd gone to sleep in bed, but sleep turned out to be elusive. Suzaku slept deeply, but couldn't sleep for very long; he'd been trained to sleep in spurts, to stay alert. Lelouch hadn't slept normally in months. And so, when it was clear that both of them had come awake….

They'd caved immediately to fresh craving. Results were even more fantastic than their first two ventures into sex. Familiarity added a new ease. Intertwining limbs made actions twice as intimate. Lelouch had again ridden unrestrained on top, with Suzaku's hands guiding his hips, driving Lelouch down as he thrust up, up, and _fast_ …. Lelouch had come so quickly, blinded by the force of it, across Suzaku's abdomen and lap. But Suzaku? Suzaku had refused to allow himself his own release. Suzaku had held out on purpose, letting Lelouch clench and spasm atop him as he merely watched, aroused and mesmerized. Yes, Suzaku had hovered somewhere just short of a lustful frenzy, restraining himself, waiting, with his breaths ragged and his eyes like dark lagoons – all because Suzaku had wanted to satisfy Lelouch _twice_.

Without providing Lelouch a moment for recovery, Suzaku had sprawled Lelouch flat on his back – like how they'd done it in the clovers. Sliding in again. In. Slow. Working that thick length, stroking deep, and dragging over pleasure spots that made Lelouch oblivious to all. Lelouch had dug his fingertips into Suzaku's shoulders. He had thrown his head back, groaning out Suzaku's name until he had gone hoarse.

He recalled Suzaku husking in his ear. _That's it, louder. That voice of yours alone will make me—_

Lelouch had gotten hard again – despite believing it impossible to grow erect twice in such a brief period. But Suzaku knew exactly how to thrill him. Suzaku relied on instinct, never letting thought insert itself between their bodies' carnal signals.

Sex with Suzaku was like slaking hunger, thirst, and lust at once, from a source that failed to possess any limits. Suzaku had pleased Lelouch last night with a soldier's stamina and discipline – never thinking of himself, never tiring until the one he placed above himself felt like no want on earth existed.

Lelouch had come a second time, with Suzaku's smooth, male scent pervading him. With Suzaku's lubed fingers stroking up and down his aching length, with Suzaku's ill-controlled, erotic pleas and whispers and commands forming a soundtrack in Lelouch's ear. Suzaku had pulled out again – at the last second, even though he'd never had to – and Lelouch had shot up from his back before he could turn boneless there. He'd done it in order to swallow Suzaku down, while both of them moaned and Lelouch aggressively licked, sucked, and swallowed.

Yes. Lelouch was sore today. He didn't think it kind that Suzaku had seen fit to leave him.

Then he saw the hastily scrawled letter on the table.

_Drills, breakfast, then drills again. News RE: mainland. Discuss at lunch w/ others?_

— _Me_

_P.S. Drink this._

A glass of muddy liquid waited, serving as a paperweight for the short note. Lelouch arched an eyebrow at it, revolted.

_P.P.S. Don't be so cynical. Just drink it._

Lelouch walked two steps farther from the bed. He stretched, his wince now not as violent. He padded to the tea table, from where the muddy glass placidly observed him.

He smelled it. Ginger. Matcha, too. A bitter undertone of unknown, medicinal-reeking herbs. His nose crinkled. The herbs and the powders collected like silt at the bottom of the glass.

Lelouch wondered if it were a recipe of Cécile's, one Suzaku had maybe borrowed. Something for recovery, perhaps, after a battle. He supposed sex was a lot like battle.

Lelouch swished what was in the glass and took a very daring gulp. Only afterward did he experience his second bolt of panic.

Jeremiah knocked and entered through the door, in a salute, while Lelouch got caught in his panic and stiffened. "Your Majesty—" He took in Lelouch's face. "What's wrong?" The man's voice became urgent like gunshots. He looked at the lumpy liquid. Back at him.

"Nothing. I—" Lelouch regarded the glass. He felt cripplingly ill, suddenly. Either the feeling was in his own head— "Nothing. Just, Suzaku put…."

"What are you drinking?" Jeremiah questioned.

"I don't know." And that was the problem.

Lelouch knew, instantly, that _every second_ of not knowing it was making his condition worse. He tried to breathe.

"Kururugi put it here." He told Jeremiah slowly, even though his mind went racing like a horse. "He wanted me to drink it. I…." Certainly, it was possible—

And in a blink, Jeremiah seemed to read him. Jeremiah… who knew as much as Lelouch did about Requiem. _Only_ that much.

Lelouch wasn't crazy, then.

"Check your pulse. You don't look pale. It's unlikely that it was poisoned." Lelouch followed the man's directions, as Jeremiah added, "I don't think it'd be his style."

Lelouch wiped his mouth once, before touching the spot where his vein fluttered in his neck. "I had an excellent day yesterday," he murmured at the window, dazedly. He counted his own heartbeats, glancing at the bedside clock. Three, four… and five came with a vagrant, extra beat that made him count it double. "The Knight of Zero was… very attentive. I thought that I could read his thinking. I assumed I understood his reasons. But all of a sudden, I've realized there's another possibility to explain why he acted—"

Lelouch lost count, a thing he rarely did, and had to start counting again.

"In my humble opinion, it's still early to dispose of you. And laying you out in your room wouldn't serve Kururugi – Zero – very well. If it were me, I'd at least have a witness. Or a crowd. It would be better if people remembered—"

"I'm letting _him_ decide the way he'll do it."

Lelouch said it mostly to conquer himself. His fear had skyrocketed. Why? He'd long ago accepted that Suzaku would choose the way and time he died. Lelouch had provided guidelines only, and chosen to leave Suzaku at that. Lelouch had no reason to fret.

Leaving the decisions about his death to his knight had lifted a weight off Lelouch's shoulders. Morbidity levels in his mind had dwindled as he had been allowed to let go, trust someone else. Even if Lelouch were to drop dead within the next five minutes…. Well. He'd have no choice but to be grateful for how Suzaku took responsibility for the significant death by himself, and allowed Lelouch simply to stand and swallow how it came about.

Yes, Lelouch had agreed to these terms, and he was not the one planning and executing the event. However Suzaku saw fit to end him was what Lelouch would need to accept.

His heart rate seemed normal now. Lelouch sucked in a calming breath.

Anxiety had caused a visceral reaction, that was all. That, and his regular fear of death had made him second-guess every good thing he'd done last night. A shame… and yet part of Lelouch reflected that perhaps he was scolding himself too hard.

Suzaku had betrayed him before. Suspecting treachery was not illogical. Nor was it illogical for Lelouch to wonder if he'd lost another a chance at happiness. He couldn't count all the good things he had lost.

But giving up his happiness was the whole point of Requiem, wasn't it. Additionally, this time it wouldn't be betrayal if Suzaku tricked him, not exactly. As long as Suzaku did not abandon Requiem altogether, treachery might simply be part of Suzaku's plan.

Lelouch was forgetting his place. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with the hand that did not hold the glass full of sludge. _Trust_ , he recalled, his head throbbing like drums. He was trusting Suzaku above himself, for the good of their collapsing world. He trusted Suzaku with his soul and with his body – in whatever ways that signified. Silly, really, to panic about it.

Lelouch tilted his head back and immediately polished off the glass.

Jeremiah looked a little torn on his behalf, but uttered nothing.

When every last glob from the bottom had slimed along the channels of Lelouch's tongue, he set the glass down with a clink. He tasted biting ginger, and sweet strains of carrot. The matcha should have tasted subtler, but it didn't. Probably due to the bits of… coffee grounds? The clashed with it and wiped out other flavors. As for identifying herbs and powders, Lelouch tried not to focus on them hard. He concentrated on keeping the foul mixture down.

A minute or two passed in which he just stared out the window.

"How do you feel now?" The question came softly.

Lelouch said, still withdrawn, "Refreshed." And then, like he'd heard his own words, he turned to Jeremiah with his eyes wide, to repeat it.

"Were you not refreshed before?" asked Jeremiah seriously. "Have you slept? Might I recommend a glass of something with more zing? Majesty, perhaps a glass of orange juice…."

Lelouch let Jeremiah carry on. His body seemed to perk; whatever Suzaku had dosed him with now shot him full of energy. The pain in Lelouch's backside did not recede, but with stiffness easing off the rest of him, his day would become bearable.

"Gottwald. Lunch meeting at noon. I want it on the lawn. Arrange it."

Jeremiah did as he was told. Lelouch spent the morning cleaning up, trying to recapture the afterglow of the night he had lost in his panic. He wondered about the news from the mainland, and what it might mean for how much time he had.

When noon arrived, Lelouch went to the lawn. C.C. and Suzaku were talking near the hedges – heads together, voices low – like two furtive conspirators. As Lelouch crossed toward them, he heard C.C. say, "I forgot that young means egocentric."

"It isn't egocentric," Suzaku told her. "If it were him, he'd do it the same way—"

"I would do what?" Lelouch asked casually.

C.C. looked up at his approach, and Suzaku's shoulders straightened with an effort. Suzaku's back was to Lelouch….

Lelouch resisted the urge to spin his startled knight around to analyze him.

"Not you, Lelouch," C.C. told him. "The old pizza delivery boy. The new one has refused to carry twenty-seven boxes up the stairs at my request."

"And I'm telling you," Suzaku said, filling up the pause with only short delay, "that even the old delivery boy would say it was too dangerous to carry every box at once."

At last, Suzaku turned around. His face was as flat and as clean as a platter; not a crumb of an emotion clung to it.

"It's not a risk he'd want to take. Not for a glutton who doesn't tip well."

C.C said, "They don't bring the pizza hot."

"Stick it in the oven."

"Unlike you, I don't like baking."

Lelouch glared, sharply enough to cut C.C. through. Suzaku wasn't listening, though; he'd stepped away to direct Jeremiah, who led the maids that still thought Suzaku was dead and thus did not acknowledge him. The maids had carts of food on trays, and they began to spread out folding tables.

C.C. exclaimed, while she had Lelouch alone, "There's a huge hickey on your neck."

Lelouch jerked his collar up over the mark. "A badge some of us haven't worn in lifetimes, I would wager."

"Hah – naïve. Do you assume I'm made of stone?"

"Ah, I see. With Mao?" Lelouch replied.

C.C. swore – a thing she'd rarely done – but her lips twitched upward. Wry and shocked, but not insulted.

Lelouch smiled too. He enjoyed it when he won.

Now. If only he could win with Suzaku.

Suzaku came wandering back. He glanced at Lelouch, and then swiftly away. "Um," he said, smoothing out his massive cape. "Food's ready."

What preoccupied Suzaku so, that he could hardly acknowledge his emperor's presence? Surely it was not the way they'd chased gratification last night. If Lelouch could still look people in the eye – people like Jeremiah, who by now suspected their relationship the way sailors suspected sinking when they noticed water flooding the ship's hold – he saw no reason why Suzaku should balk from it.

Suzaku was not the one with a large mark bright on his neck.

Lelouch replied nothing just yet. Perhaps Suzaku felt uncertain in the presence of the others. Still, Lelouch couldn't shake the worry that Suzaku's stiffness had to do with something else. Had Suzaku and C.C. really been talking about pizza?

After a moment, when none but Lelouch moved, it became apparent that C.C. and Suzaku were waiting for him to sit down first. Lelouch took the lead in walking to the tables, feeling further stirrings of suspicion.

Behind him, Suzaku hissed something that made C.C. laugh. A harsh laugh, without any humor present. She muttered, and Lelouch could hear.

"Either way, you lose. The sooner—"

"Don't say it, C.C.. I'll cry."

Suzaku's voice came out as serious as cancer. He spoke completely differently when he talked with C.C.. Lelouch's heart rate quickened, listening to this side of Suzaku he had not heard before. Suzaku didn't hold back strictness, didn't bother with flowery politeness or with being gentle, but he upheld deference. He bluntly, starkly spoke with C.C., in a low, heavy tone that cut straight to the chase – as if he valued C.C.'s time, despite that she had eons of it. As if, for once, he didn't take pains to ensure the party he spoke to approved of him, could judge him a non-threat.

The voice conveyed none of Suzaku's personality, none of Suzaku's tenderness or care. He sounded like a tool, precise and unfeeling as he carried out his motions. Purpose, that was what the timbre carried. Suzaku communicated with purpose.

Whatever the purpose was, Lelouch could tell Suzaku found it grim. And he still had hardly acknowledged Lelouch.

They all sat, and began to eat. Ham sandwiches on French bread, fruit salad, and airy cream puffs for dessert lined their two tables. C.C. took a long time unfolding her napkin. Jeremiah introduced official conversation, reporting that the most recent mainland revolt had lost them seven hundred troops.

Suzaku asked, "And how many civilian lives were lost?"

C.C. corrected him. "Rebel lives. Rebels."

"How many rebel lives?" said Suzaku with difficulty.

"Seventeen hundred."

Silence dropped on the table.

Lelouch reflected that the rebels had been brave. It wasn't wrong, to fight against having him as emperor. Those who had moved against Lelouch's troops had been smart enough to see his tyranny for what it was. They were people like Kallen. They were people like Xinge-ke. Lelouch had no doubt they'd fought bravely, like Ohgi. To kill so many righteous people for his grand dictatorship….

"A necessary tragedy," muttered Jeremiah. "If I hadn't ended them—"

"The sin is on my shoulders, Gottwald," Lelouch said to him at once. He very calmly forced himself to polish off his sandwich next.

C.C. and Suzaku exchanged a glance. Lelouch pretended not to notice. He sipped the white sangria he'd been served, and then allowed himself a double helping of dessert. When again would he be able to indulge in sweets like this?

Suzaku watched him swirl his fork into some cream, and twisted up his napkin. Lelouch steered the conversation back to business, keeping on the topic of reports.

"How has the media coverage been going? C.C., you watch television. Gottwald, you have access to Diethard's old outlets. How do the station heads react, when they receive orders about what I force them to report? Surely my image by now seems to them—"

"Let me – and the others – handle all that from now on." Suzaku interrupted him. C.C. and Jeremiah faltered, startled. "Give us full control of operations. Stay out of it now, Lelouch."

Jeremiah coughed and scowled. Made a knight-like gesture with his arm.

Suzaku said, "Stay out of it, _Your Majesty_."

Lelouch lifted an eyebrow at them all. "You want full control of the world?" He turned back to Suzaku, keeping his gaze steady; he wouldn't lose Suzaku's regard now that he'd managed to obtain it. "You feel ready to take my position? You feel the world's ready to put me behind it?" He tried not to reflect that the questions he asked were the same ones he'd asked himself this morning, drinking Suzaku's concoction.

_Suzaku can kill me whenever he wants_ , Lelouch reminded himself. _I've trusted his judgment._ Lelouch would do nothing to delay the process.

Unless Suzaku no longer seemed fit or prepared to do the job.

Lelouch decided it could do no harm to test his knight again. "Is the new Zero ready to become the people's symbol?"

Suzaku shook his head, just once. He knew what Lelouch really asked him. "If that's what I meant, you'd already be—"

"Dead." Lelouch played with his dessert. "Good."

Now at least he knew for sure Suzaku hadn't planned to finish him right after such fantastic sex. He'd be allowed the remainder of this day to cherish what had happened. Tension receded.

C.C. had put her fork down and was staring at the hedges.

Lelouch decided he would give Suzaku an opening. By suggesting that Lelouch relinquish his reins, did Suzaku actually seek a way to set Lelouch's death in motion? "What do you mean to propose?" Lelouch asked.

"You've done enough," Suzaku said, ignoring Jeremiah's rumbled sigh of, _Your place, Kururugi_. Lelouch intently analyzed his knight. "You won, Lelouch. Why not take a vacation?"

"A vacation. You'd remove me? Do you wish to kill me elsewhere?"

Lelouch feigned curiosity so he would not let slip new fear. To die away from Nunnally….

Suzaku bore the onslaught of Lelouch's barefaced questions gamely. "A vacation. I'll go with you. The two of us could have fun. Travel."

Lelouch pretended to consider the option. "While my sister, Kallen, and the rest are in prison? While you are supposed to be very much dead?"

"Geass more people to ignore my presence." Suzaku's reaction was knee-jerk and strained. He seemed to realize his own haste and regret it. He rubbed his forehead and slowed his words down. "Lelouch. You can't keep leaning on Nunnally and Kallen as an excuse not to go out and do things. It was you who said they wouldn't be in jail forever. You shouldn't _visit_ them, either." Suzaku dropped his hand on the table. "It's hard enough on you to keep wearing your mask in front of them. Plus, if they even begin to suspect—"

"I'm not so tasteless as to give myself away. I also won't abandon them to be forgotten. If I left here for even a week—"

"Let C.C. and Sir Gottwald just—"

"I have no intention of disturbing my routine." Lelouch cut Suzaku off as he clinked his fork and slapped down his linen napkin.

Why the sudden urge to see Lelouch go out and 'do things?' Suzaku spoke of recreation, not the duties Lelouch still had as emperor. If Suzaku wanted to force him into sudden entertainment – or worse, severe political submission when there still were small things Lelouch could do to remain busy – Lelouch would have to tell the truth in order to fend off Suzaku's pressures. He would have to bare his inner feelings – the ones he guarded well so he did not have to face them himself.

Suzaku's expression seemed to say the truth was what he wanted. Such a scowl…. Lelouch shut his eyes, seeking equanimity.

"Suddenly indulging myself," he ventured, conscious of everyone's eyes, "and making my life that carefree, that distracted… I can't think of any better proof to remind me I will soon be dying." He smiled at the tablecloth. His voice cracked. "To overdose on last-minute activities simply because I know my time has dwindled…. I can think of little that would feel phonier, or more superficial. I can think of little that would drive home that I'm dying faster. I don't want that. Suzaku, I don't want it."

C.C. turned away again. Jeremiah stood up, with his eyebrows scrunched like troubled caterpillars.

Lelouch imagined they found it unpleasant to be bluntly reminded they were dining with a dead man. People, if and when they could, preferred to fend off stark realities. Suzaku, however, didn't look away. He did not even blink.

He stared.

In fact, the more seconds that passed, the more Suzaku resembled a bottle poised to fracture due to pressure from inside.

Jeremiah said, "It seems to me this is a private conversation. If I could excuse myself—"

Suzaku's voice cracked too, but worse. "You don't want to die _happy,_ Lelouch?"

He cried it as if no one else had spoken. His armor fell away like it had rusted, and the Suzaku that Lelouch loved seeped out from a searching, agonized green gaze. For all the world, it seemed Suzaku registered only Lelouch. His very spirit quested out to engulf Lelouch and assess him.

Lelouch resisted conflicting urges to both bring Suzaku comfort and to slap him.

"Suzaku, _I don't want to die_. But since I still intend to, I don't want that death to happen after final days that feel contrived. Or only given out of pity." Was that so hard to understand? Lelouch looked at his plate and paused. "Unless, of course, you think such punishment is something I deserve. Then you'd find me compliant."

Suzaku pursed his paling lips.

Lelouch was willing to bet that Suzaku's goal was not to further sentence him. If Suzaku wanted Lelouch punished further, he'd never ask permission before doling out his justice. A steadfast sense of righteousness and willingness to act upon it – that was why Lelouch trusted Suzaku. The fact that his knight tried hard to _divert_ Lelouch now from nearing inevitability meant Suzaku thought Lelouch deserved a painkiller more than he deserved more pain. But why was Suzaku pressing him so hard?

Their intimacy from last night took on new meaning; Lelouch mulled over it, ignoring his cream puff. Had Suzaku been looking at sex with Lelouch like granting Lelouch a last favor? Was the care he took in leaving Lelouch a handwritten note… was the drink he'd made with his own hands a way of expressing regret for the turmoil he assumed Lelouch was feeling?

"I don't want to pity you," Suzaku said. "I want to—"

"Hush."

Jeremiah tried again. "Your Majesty—"

Lelouch uttered, "Yes, go away. Dismissed."

A sigh, and Jeremiah made his exit. Lelouch queried instantly, "C.C.?"

C.C. fixed him with a smile like a broken doll's. "I'm yours, Lelouch," she said, shattered and beautiful. "Aren't we accomplices?" She twirled the stem of her sangria.

She would stay, with or without any permission.

"I'm not such a feeble flame, Suzaku," Lelouch murmured, after Jeremiah had retreated and C.C. had made her stand. "I'm not letting my gusts of fear snuff out the light of my remaining days. You forget – I'm trusting you, so I don't have to shoulder as much burden." He looked at C.C.. "I'm trusting both of you."

C.C. did not react to that. Lelouch wondered if she had ever wanted this. Had C.C., after Charles's defeat, only wished to flee, the way she had once flown from Mao? It seemed a mystery sometimes that she still spoke to him, and graced his table.

_I never meant to drag you down with me._

Lelouch went on when nobody replied. "It's true that Zero Requiem is winding down now, Suzaku. The progression is natural, but it seems to have you worried. Let go of sentiment. Let go of any gifts you think I'm owed. I assure you, there's no need to indulge me beyond what you've already done. If you don't agree, perhaps your habit of self-reproach is leading you to find your treatment of me somehow insufficient. If that's the case, I will tell you only this." Lelouch leaned forward, hands folded, his voice courting a strictness aimed directly at his Knight of Zero. "Don't press your insecurities on me. Your guilty conscience isn't my responsibility."

When Suzaku didn't cast his eyes aside like Lelouch expected him to – when all Suzaku did was tighten his jaw to prove he thought Lelouch misunderstood him – Lelouch softened his tone just slightly.

"I don't feel like my life is unfulfilled. I'm perfectly content staying here in Japan. I don't mind taking part in our remaining tasks, despite that there may be more interesting activities I could be pursuing. _This_ is my life, and I just want to live it. What about that is hard for you to grasp?"

"There's still so much you could experience!" The exclamation occupied the rung below a flagrant shout on the ladder of volume. "And—" the volume dropped, abruptly "—I could experience it with you. You still have money, authority, your health—"

"And the urge to do nothing more with it than what will benefit the world." Lelouch's volume matched Suzaku's – unchecked, rising… and beginning to grate like roadways under studded winter tires.

Shouldn't Suzaku be pleased about this? In the World of C, Suzaku had told Lelouch that he should benefit the world!

"I don't need to accumulate further experiences," Lelouch elucidated, forcing in a steady breath. C.C. swallowed slowly from her glass. "As for you, you'll have a lifetime to explore the world on trips and nice vacations, with the money and authority I will have left you." How could Suzaku be fussing?

"It's not that I want to right now," Suzaku delivered. "It's that I want to with you." Lelouch looked at Suzaku, baffled. "Lelouch, god damn it, don't sit there and be so thick! Don't make me listen to you refuse to take a chance on one last—" He stopped. "Fine. Fine; you're always like this. All right. We'll put my part aside. I'm still concerned for you, and what you're cutting yourself off from. You don't ever let yourself—"

"Kururugi," C.C. interrupted. Her blatant rebuke was surprisingly soft.

"No. I'm trying—"

"And that's all you can do." She turned, before Lelouch could reprimand either of them. "Lelouch. If you're content, then be it." It seemed she would have quit pizza to buy his silence with Suzaku's.

Lelouch rose, frustrated and confounded by both of them. Suzaku leaned back in his chair, breathing quickly. Lines were depressing Suzaku's forehead, as if he thought Lelouch would leave and was sorely tempted to allow it. When Lelouch made it clear he intended only to round the table, a breath went out of C.C. like a sail losing its wind. She made an oblique venture with her finger, brushing it across one eye.

Lelouch almost looked at her twice, wondering if C.C. had just wiped away a tear.

He didn't check. The king needed to move. He stepped around the table, preparing to lead his knight. He didn't want to watch Suzaku teeter of the cusp of falling down, breaking apart.

He leaned in until his bangs brushed Suzaku's cheek, tickling the curve of Suzaku's ear. Intimate, the way two paperclips were when they linked.

"In your haste to argue, you've forgotten something remarkably obvious." He used a throaty whisper he hoped C.C. couldn't hear. "I've already done what I wanted to most."

Suzaku released a subtle gasp.

Their lunch meeting did not resume. Lelouch retired. His empress appeared drained. But Suzaku looked lit with fire. Lelouch was still not sure what kind – even once day turned into night.

They lost themselves in wild sex again.

"I gave you too much of that energy powder," grunted Suzaku, breathing hard while he undressed himself atop Lelouch's bed.

"Is that what was inside my swampy drink?" Lelouch skimmed lips and teeth down Suzaku's neck, forcing Suzaku's head back – so his knight had to splay his hands out on the sheets to keep from tipping over in the moonlight.

Suzaku said, trying to talk, as if talking would slow them down, "I drink it every day, and mix in lots of other stuff. You looked tired, lying there when I woke up. But at lunch, I got mad I even bothered. You would think I accidentally dumped in stupidity powder—" He stopped, distracted, removing Lelouch's cloak violently.

"Stupidity powder? If you keep that around… well, it explains a lot about you." Lelouch knocked Suzaku down flat. Suzaku gave a yelp of irritation.

Neither of them truly dominated. Lelouch cared not who took the most control or for how long; despite all his frustrations, he let the control vary. Their partner efforts gave him shivers. What was there that they could not achieve together? Teamwork in this suited them, no matter that they took opposing sides.

Opposing sides had always been their way.

Suzaku ended up dictating the direction pleasure would take first. He asked to flip Lelouch over, stomach-side down, his haunches in the air.

"Why so prone?" Lelouch inquired.

Suzaku's hooded eyes were far away. "That night, when I used only my fingers, and you bit the covers and rocked against my hand, just— into it, every time I pushed—"

Lelouch did not allow Suzaku to finish. "Yes," he said, spilling the words like diamonds. "Do it, yes." And the commands that followed, as Suzaku thrust into him with a length that this time _wasn't_ fingers…. The commands were as sharply cut, the desire that bolted down Lelouch's own length in response made Lelouch just as hard, while the facets of their physical intimacy sparkled like no other jewel of passion ever could have. Lelouch's desire spilled over again, glazing a sheen of white across the sheets.

They lay dazzled, after. Diamonds.

The intoxicated feeling faded, as his heart rate slowed and he came down. Lelouch found himself mulling on their disagreement when he tried to go to bed.

Suzaku had brought up taking vacation… because he feared Lelouch would somehow die unsatisfied. Did he fear sex was not enough to make Lelouch fulfilled? Was that because Suzaku couldn't give Lelouch his love? Suzaku apparently couldn't believe Lelouch was content with everything he had.

Why not? For someone as bloodstained as him, Lelouch did not deserve even this much.

Perhaps _Suzaku_ was the one unsatisfied. Lelouch could not imagine how or why.

They coupled again the following morning, in an intricate twist of legs and torturously slow, intensive thrusts. Suzaku's attitude was less aggressive, but his actions absolutely weren't; he treated Lelouch with a measured intensity designed to leave him weeping from the pleasure. His movements induced friction vigorous enough to make Lelouch forget where he was – and _who_ he was, but not what he was doing. Extraordinary thrusts inspired him to nearly begin begging by the third, and to moan hotly on the fourth. In, Suzaku went. In, remaining buried there while both their heartbeats thundered, then dragging out again across every sensitive nerve ending. Slow, sensual. Too amazing.

Lelouch grew near to peaking before he could even register the notion. Suzaku was managing as well to bite and twist his tongue along the curve of Lelouch's neck—

"S-Su _zaku_..."

Suzaku touched him everywhere. Teeth across Lelouch's skin. Fingertips running possessively down his chest, lingering on a nipple, caressing there as Suzaku's tongue melted Lelouch's ear when opportunities became presented. The overstimulation pushed Lelouch to heights he somehow hadn't reached yet, even after _so much sex_ —

"Suzaku, I—!" A part of him wondered what Suzaku strove so desperately to prove, but then Lelouch let go of thought.

Lelouch could not recall what happened next. Only that Suzaku doubled the pace without warning, catching Lelouch so off-guard with relish that it took no time at all to soak the room's once-priceless, gold-fringed, Persian rug. Suzaku chose to come inside of Lelouch again at last, filling him – and Suzaku came for an incredibly long time. Riding the climax, rocking those hips, so hard Lelouch could feel Suzaku's thighs rubbing against him. Working, burning, pressing, just— slick with sweat, enduring long enough that Lelouch shouted out and thrashed his own orgasm, dragging his nails along the rug like it could help him endure this divine indulgence sure to kill a lesser being.

Suzaku held onto him when it was over. Suzaku had learned to find a hug, and not to let Lelouch wriggle away. Suzaku knew the right ways now to give Lelouch exactly what he needed, even when Lelouch insisted he needed no rest, and he wanted to do it again.

"Why do you only get better at sex?" Lelouch asked, breathless, drunk on it.

"Everyone does, assuming they practice." Suzaku's statement came out matter-of-fact.

They stayed inside the whole day – talking, chuckling, embarrassingly absorbed in the presence of each other. They skipped dinner, when dinner finally came about. They weren't about to dress again and go down to the kitchens late. Suzaku glanced at the clock at ten past nine, and claimed he had begun to think of food. Lelouch said, "We could ring for late room service." Then he caught Suzaku looking at him.

He felt a wash of bafflement, then something else like love too amplified. Suzaku's undisguised emotion suggested unadulterated admiration.

"The way you lean," Suzaku said, "to think like that, with such a perfect profile…. It's got to be a crime."

All Lelouch was wearing was a pair of drawstring, plaid pajama pants. Flannel, and incredibly soft. He bared less skin than Suzaku, who wore only his boxer shorts. Lelouch had been astonished to see he owned something besides boxer-briefs.

"In fact, this whole day has to be a crime. Especially because I know you've gone through it but haven't changed your mind about vacation." A grumble. "You're impossible. I can't believe I feel so…."

"What?"

"Lelouch. This day doesn't feel real. No—everything I do with you like this is too surreal." His voice dipped suddenly, like he had found their day unsatisfying.

"You're wrong. Unless you're trying to say that my recent screaming orgasm wasn't convincing." Lelouch pretended offense at the idea Suzaku might be suggesting he had faked it.

Suzaku paused, and then said, grudgingly, "I've never believed you more than I did with you sweating, bucking, and moaning my name."

The boxers were a standard, military gray. Lelouch preferred Suzaku out of them. Judging from Suzaku's sideways look, Suzaku might have said the same thing of Lelouch's plaid pajamas.

Lelouch made his way over to his knight. Suzaku sat on the edge of rug before the fireplace – the bit of rug they hadn't stained. A fat log crackled on the hearth. Suzaku poked at it with the nearest iron tool, his knees tucked up, with one arm wrapping around them to keep himself steady. Lelouch reached out to slip the poker from his fingers.

"Lelouch?"

"I've thought of something hotter, if you need me to prove again that this is real." A lot hotter than fire, yes.

Lelouch pressed up against Suzaku from behind, his bare chest to Suzaku's bare back. The spoon-like embrace made Suzaku shudder. Lelouch enjoyed the heat of skin on skin.

"Behind me like that…. You'll just put my guard up."

"Or," whispered Lelouch, nipping swiftly at Suzaku's earlobe, "I'll coax you into letting me—"

"Le—ahh!"

Lelouch reached into Suzaku's boxers, finding what he wanted right away.

And then, holding Suzaku from behind, keeping Suzaku close, Lelouch worked his grip up and down Suzaku's length. After those first strokes, Suzaku's knees reluctantly hinged apart to offer better access. Suzaku grew hard in precious little time, the fast erection pulsing in Lelouch's fingers, getting firmer by the seconds.

Lelouch breathed right beside Suzaku's ear. "Yes, Suzaku. Just like that. You feel so solid—" he stroked his thumb across the tip "—and when you're like this, I can't help but react. It's how you move; it's your tempting response."

A groan. Suzaku's hips began to buck, to rock into the rhythm of his hand. "Lelouch… w-wait. It's, I-I—"

"You can't help it if your body is eager. Mine is too, Suzaku. Very much. Just holding you in my hand, or in my mouth…." He rose a little, to let his own erection brush against Suzaku from behind. Suzaku whined – urgently, and low. "It's arousing. You—" Lelouch murmured in time with his strokes "—are flawless. You are something so divine. Yes. _Yes,_ come, into my hand—"

Suzaku did as he was bidden, sweating and gasping, letting out a rich cry. Lelouch could feel the heat of Suzaku's skin like the outside of a stove still pressed tightly against his own.

He licked his fingers when the act was finished. Suzaku turned slowly around.

Both their chests heaved, and their eyes met. Suzaku Kururugi started crying.

Lelouch asked, bewildered, "Tears? Was it that good?" He hoped humor would prompt a clearer explanation.

Suzaku did not crack a smile. "Yes, that good. Too good, Lelouch. That's what I've been trying to—" Suzaku trembled. Something cold lurched in Lelouch's stomach. "I can't—" Suzaku fell silent. He swiped a wrist across his eyes. "Lelouch. I j-just… you're so….."

And Suzaku reached out, like he would cup Lelouch's cheek. But then he pulled his hand away, and turned his head, and shut his eyes.

"What is it?" Lelouch said, reacting. He rose up on his knees, suppressing sudden and tumultuous suspicions. This didn't have a thing to do with Suzaku's pleasure, did it. No, it didn't. Something else.

"I can't," was all Suzaku said.

"Suzaku… what? What can't you do?" Lelouch made sure to ask gently, but by the time Suzaku dropped his head into his hands, Lelouch believed he understood.

C.C. had tried to warn him. She'd said intimacy couldn't last. Lelouch was losing Suzaku right here, right now, before his eyes.

He wondered if it had to do with lunch out on the lawn. Then he didn't care. He only wanted to halt time to stop it.

For a long minute, Suzaku couldn't respond – other than to shake his head, repeat his two-word phrase, and cry.

Lelouch tore his gaze from green eyes and rumpled hair to look into the fire's blaze. "It felt so good," he said, "you don't think you can stand to feel it over and over. It felt so good it's painful. It's…." If Suzaku could not put words to it, Lelouch would, even if he lacked a few of them.

He understood the sentiment himself – the temptation to draw away from a thing so marvelous its power could not be collected or contained. It could not be controlled or comprehended. The magnitude of what they shared intimidated, overwhelmed the senses. Anyone would mistrust such a marvel at first. Yet…. Lelouch tried to ignore the strains of dread and looming disappointment that harangued him. Yet he understood he'd still seek out their closeness, despite that its intensity frightened him. Suzaku… would not. No, Suzaku was different.

Suzaku did not want to love and then lose.

Suzaku's voice was muffled when he whispered. "For _you_ to be the one who makes me feel— This is the cruelest game fate could have played."

"There is no fate, besides the one we make ourselves."

"Then you are the cruelest person I know, to have arranged a tragedy like this."

It slapped him like a lash from a damp towel. Suzaku would prefer comedy? Laughter was only a balm for so long. People's lives were shaped by disaster, by trial – not by life's painless pleasantries. Lelouch didn't flinch. The flames danced, jumped and licked.

Suzaku said, "You _are_ a demon." Lelouch did his best not to let the words sting. "How can you feel this between us, this— _this!—_ and simply accept that it will disappear?"

"Nothing lasts forever," Lelouch uttered. "Didn't Milly tell us that?"

"Milly knew enough not to play games she couldn't win. That's why she gave up becoming Ashford's heir, and now she's a newscaster."

Lelouch didn't move out of range when the fire spurted out a spray of sparks. He should have put the spark-screen up. "When would a game like ours be considered won?"

"When you wouldn't have to disappear. Why can't we have this, Lelouch? Even vacation?"

"Because of Zero Requiem."

"Requiem. God, Zero Requiem." Suzaku leaned his head on his knees. "Ha ha…." The laugh made Lelouch shiver. "Lelouch. Is your refusal to do anything but think of it…. Is that attitude meant as extra punishment for me?"

Lelouch felt blood drain from his face. He looked at Suzaku, and then he stood up, feeling as if he'd been punched in the kidneys. He also registered the uncomfortable press of his pants. His carnal urges were less than critical right now; he would ignore them.

"You see this as punishment?" he husked. "Even if it will be taken away—" The words caught in Lelouch's throat like scraps inside a sink that wouldn't drain.

What they had was _beautiful_. Lelouch would never, ever use their intimacy to hurt Suzaku again. The closeness they had now blew all their old conflicts away. Nothing… there was _nothing_ more amazing than the bond they'd come to share.

Not even Requiem should threaten it.

Suzaku caught his breath and looked at him. "I have to live, I have to kill you, I have to say goodbye to just holding you in my arms. What is that, if not more punishment? I'll take it, Lelouch. You know I always will – and half of it is my own fault for failing to resist again. But I won't agree that it's fully deserved. Not this. Not the part where I have to lose you, where I'm losing you emotionally before you're even gone. I know I never had your heart—you made that clear…."

Lelouch faltered. Then he choked on more words that wouldn't come. Why couldn't Suzaku ever believe he was loved? Why had Lelouch failed, over and over, to convince Suzaku that he truly cared? He'd said it clear as day, at the Kururugi shrine! What had Lelouch done so wrong, that over and over again Suzaku didn't believe him?

He'd never get through Suzaku's walls. The sudden knowledge short-circuited currents in Lelouch's mind.

"God damn you for what you did to wreck the world. You do deserve to die for it, but I… this twist on it, I can't—"

Lelouch would have pawned off his soul to dry Suzaku's tears, even as Suzaku's words recalled to him that Suzaku already owned that soul. Suzaku was his chosen god – and passing judgment even now.

"Knight of Zero," he said, "wipe your eyes."

If he hadn't known how to proceed a moment ago, Lelouch knew now. He knew now, hearing Suzaku proclaim again that he deserved to die. Lelouch stood up a little straighter, like he carried his red and green jewels and his cloak, although he faced Suzaku almost stripped of every ounce of inner strength.

Yes, Lelouch deserved to die and would – and partly now because of what he'd done to Suzaku. This had made Suzaku cry. He'd failed to convince Suzaku he was loved.

Such tragedy could not go on.

"If it hurts," Lelouch said, "then return to your room, Suzaku. We can be done. We _will_ be done, now." He didn't mean it like a threat. He softened his voice so Suzaku would know it. "I've already told you once. The last thing that I want to do – and this close to the end – is lose you. If doing this makes you want to shut me out, then we won't do it any more."

For some reason, Suzaku cried harder.

Lelouch felt like a baby blade of grass, breaking upward through the dirt at night instead of under light of day. Disoriented, lost, and weak. Uncertain about all but one short, driving notion.

He would not be the thorn that wedged in Suzaku's side. Lelouch would rather die than cause Suzaku further pain. He'd give Suzaku Kururugi up before he would indulge himself and watch Suzaku agonized.

Suzaku said nothing for a time. But Lelouch watched his shoulders shake. As for himself, Lelouch only felt sadness. When eras ended, when chances were lost… Lelouch supposed they felt about a quarter as crippling as this.

Eventually, Suzaku climbed up from the hearth. The tear-tracks had been rubbed off of his cheeks. He said, "Maybe you're right, Lelouch. Maybe C.C. was right, from the beginning. Maybe this _does_ have to end, now, tonight. I can't take it anymore. Whether or not sleeping with you again was part of your plan to punish me—"

"It wasn't. I don't need to punish you, Suzaku. You've always successfully punished yourself." Lelouch wanted to kiss the clumped up lashes that fringed Suzaku's green eyes when Suzaku looked away.

For Zero Requiem, all Lelouch had done was enable Suzaku to punish himself the way Suzaku had yearned to ever since he'd killed his father as a child. From Lelouch's perspective, Suzaku's half of Requiem wasn't truly punishment. It was a sneaky way to preserve Suzaku. To make him feel he had atoned, so he could finally re-cultivate a sense of worth. So he could live, like he deserved.

Lelouch kept his hands at his sides. "If you can't take it, that's all right. Your best effort is all I ever asked. I swear by Nunnally we're through, and I won't lay a hand on you again." Lelouch took a short step away to seal it.

A swallow greeted his grave oath. A question hung on Suzaku's lips that never fully came to pass. Finally, Suzaku shook his head. He choked out, "Yes. I think that's best."

"I believe you."

Suzaku opened his mouth.

"No," said Lelouch. "Regret nothing. And don't dare apologize." Suzaku regretted enough, hated himself enough already. Always.

"Tomorrow—"

"Tomorrow, we will function normally, as a knight and emperor, in the two roles we suit best." He waited for Suzaku to catch his gaze, so he could smile.

Suzaku couldn't hold eye contact.

The fire continued to crackle. Both of them just watched it, for a time.

"Well," Lelouch said, casually, striving to usher them forward once the quiet spell had passed… and it seemed Suzaku had run out of tears. "While it lasted, it worked wonders for my stress levels. What you allowed me to share with you was cherished, if it was not the same for you. I expect you to tell me – as soon as you can – what your emperor can do to restore to you the peace of mind you've given him."

Suzaku's voice came thick with sorrow. "I ask for you not to remind me I care."

"Oh?" There was a wedge inside his throat. He had to swallow it before he could agree. "Done, Suzaku. On my honor." Even though Suzaku's answer had been rapid.

Suzaku released a puff of breath. "Do you _have_ any honor, Lelouch?"

_Touché_ , Lelouch responded inside.

The fire had collapsed into red embers, yet they watched it for a longer time. They watched it until Suzaku shook himself and went to find his shirt. He pulled the wrinkled item on.

"I'll say good night, Your Majesty."

Lelouch allowed Suzaku to bow and start nudging his toes into his shoes. He let Suzaku leave, and watched Suzaku shut the door.

He sat down on his king-sized bed.

This choice belonged to Suzaku, not him.

The lines could not be scratched out of the dirt between them after all. What was Lelouch supposed to do, but finally accept that fact? He wouldn't be on earth for much more time, but Suzaku would have to live with these decisions for the rest of his life. Lelouch did not want Suzaku feeling haunted. To preserve Suzaku, to prevent Suzaku from hating himself after Lelouch was gone… Lelouch would have to let Suzaku go.

And he would. He loved Suzaku far more than he loved himself.

The only thing he didn't understand was why loving Suzaku tore such holes inside his chest.


	18. Farewell

That night, Lelouch stayed awake, considering Suzaku's decision to walk away. He asked himself multiple times if it had been right to push Suzaku to do it. He found that it was wise to come to terms with the event, when – in the morning – Jeremiah arrived with his report.

Suzaku trailed at Jeremiah's arm. If Lelouch hadn't steeled himself, he'd have broken apart.

"What is it?" Lelouch asked of them. He still wore his pajama pants, and only remained half-aware of how he wore no shirt to match. He draped like a throw rug on the cushioned window seat, absorbing morning light with his hand pressed to his brow. Did he look disorganized, ruffled? He wondered if he looked pathetic.

"The last rebellion was put down."

"The last?"

"No one can stand against you now."

"No one." Lelouch repeated Gottwald's phrase, glancing at Suzaku, who kept his eyes on the floor. Once or twice Suzaku's gaze flicked toward the hearth… where Lelouch hadn't swept the ashes from the fire.

"No one now, Your Majesty. The Area would like to celebrate." Jeremiah's voice held notes of pride. "The station heads want your victory televised. They've taken your advice about featuring your successes."

"Do you have recommendations for a fitting celebration?"

"A parade, with all the royal floats," said Suzaku, cutting in at last. "And a public execution of the prisoners who defied you."

"Public execution?" Lelouch met Suzaku's gaze. He managed, too, to quell his shiver. "That's egocentric, in extremes. Everyone already loathes me. Why go to an exaggerated length to illustrate my villainous streak when I've just won? I could celebrate with a masquerade ball or a sporting event." Like one of Milly's festivals. The world would loathe him even more if he killed prisoners the same week as—

They'd loathe him more.

Hatred. Of course. He must be very, very tired.

"You're the demon emperor," Suzaku said. "And you're plenty egocentric."

Lelouch had caught Suzaku's meaning. Hate plus more hate equaled Zero Requiem, yes.

Lelouch felt a stab of inward pride along with pain. His knight was doing this just right. Why did he feel betrayed again, then? It wasn't the logistics of the plan that made him dubious. Perhaps it was because… when Suzaku had called him egocentric—

It didn't matter, though, did it. Lelouch cinched his lips and curtly nodded his approval. Suzaku did not intend that Lelouch carry out the execution – that much Lelouch could determine, even tired. The plan would never get that far; they wouldn't shoot down innocents. But by announcing the event, more hate would pile on Lelouch. Requiem depended on the power of that hatred, and Lelouch would not waste an opportunity to heap it higher.

His nod, however, prompted neither he nor Suzaku to relax.

"Well then." Jeremiah glanced a little too exaggeratedly between the two of them. Lelouch blinked and straightened at the window. "Shall I arrange it, with Your Majesty's permission? I imagine preparations would take but twenty-four hours." Jeremiah met Lelouch's eyes, his manner dauntless.

"I will do as Kururugi wishes," Lelouch said, skin prickling, the moment before grasping what hid behind Jeremiah's different mannerism. Many points might muddle or deceive the mind… but not Lelouch's. Not long. Even tired.

_I imagine preparations would take but twenty-four hours._

Jeremiah Gottwald 'imagined' nothing – he simply learned, then acted with his grim precision. A task was done once it had been completed. The time it took to do it rarely mattered. Jeremiah would toil until goals were reached, often finishing well before anyone expected – unless he had encountered some delay… or received specific orders about timing. Then he'd slow down or speed up as necessary.

The time window for this parade was specific and noteworthy, or Jeremiah would not have mentioned it. But why  _must_  the parade be held at that time? Could it not be scheduled more conveniently, around the demon emperor's whim? Yes, they had to take advantage of the public's stewing hatred in order to build to Zero Requiem's conclusion. But, how come….

Before full comprehension formed itself into words in Lelouch's mind, Lelouch had made a cracked sound in the back of his throat. He dropped against the windowpane, surmising it.

Twenty-four hours was the limit, the last time-stretch they had to build Requiem up, because Suzaku had decided – finally – that that was when Lelouch would die.

Suzaku and Jeremiah weren't scheduling events around the parade; they were scheduling events and the parade around Zero Requiem. It was even possible the parade had been designed as a distraction.

"Are you all right?" Suzaku asked.

"Clearing my throat." No one reacted. Lelouch strove for composure. "Breakfast," he said, grasping weakly after subject change.

"We've already eaten, Majesty," said Jeremiah. "If you, however, wish to dine—"

"He doesn't eat this early," Suzaku muttered. The statement was neutral, neither malicious nor genuine.

Lelouch wanted to strangle both of them.

Twenty-four hours… and then he would die. Suzaku had decided the time was now. Hatred for Lelouch outside was high, they couldn't sleep together any more…. Suzaku had laid out all the plans before now, but not the timing of them; he'd left that to circumstance. And when the circumstance had seemed right, finally, he'd launched his plans… and in a military mannerism.

Twenty-four hours. Enough time in a soldier's mind for anything – but not so much interim allowance that an operation planned would start losing its steam. Also not so little leeway for hiccups that the operation would scramble to conduct itself on time. Suzaku had applied a soldier's thinking to the task of murdering Lelouch, despite its magnitude – and he'd approached Lelouch's end like a squadron pinning down some terrorists.  _You have twenty-four hours to surrender and come out, or we will bomb your hideaway._ Plan to a degree, but then turn to improvisation.

Lelouch looked at Jeremiah and Suzaku as if they were mannequins, devoid of perception. Did Jeremiah believe himself subtle? Lelouch had told them all he didn't want to figure out when he would die! This was the problem with the Britannian military way of thinking; everyone remained predictable, and everyone thought he could keep secrets secret. Everyone thought he could just improvise, because status or reputation or intimidation or faith or ideals would account for the rest. No one planned, predicted, or calculated to the extent that Lelouch always had. Zero would have— If this were Zero, he'd—

Ah, but Suzaku was Zero now. Yes. How could Lelouch speak out against it?

He already knew that he wouldn't. He couldn't. And if Lelouch were honest, Zero often improvised. To rely too closely on a plan that might go wrong was folly, lack of foresight.

Lelouch's skin felt hot and cold. So, this was when his death would come about.

Suzaku swept into a bow, seemingly unaffected by Lelouch's pale expression. His cape fluttered, and then he left the room.

Lelouch's sorrow rekindled itself.

Jeremiah followed Suzaku out. "I'll keep you updated, Your Majesty."

"No need. Just tell me when the float is leaving." Lelouch stayed alone, for a long, long time.

Then he stood and went to find C.C..

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" C.C. asked when he walked in, expecting Lelouch not to answer her. She sat inside her room, slurping at pizza. If their recent lawn luncheon had upset her, she showed none of her torn emotions now.

Lelouch said, "Suzaku is planning a parade."

C.C.'s movements slightly hitched. "Hah. You came in here to tell me that? What do I care about some parade? Parades are for exaggerated queens. I'm sure you know."

Lelouch looked at her. Memorized her features.

"I'll stay here and eat pizza, Lelouch. Really."

The lie did not look pretty on her face. Lelouch took the cheese pizza from her hands, drawing C.C. up and off the couch.

She kept trying. "To tear a woman from her pizza—"

"C.C.."

He said it with finality. He said it like he'd said,  _I love you_  to a Geassed Nunnally. He put the pizza slice down in the box. "Thank you for all you've done for me."

A pause fell on them. "Ah. I see." C.C. adopted a quick smile. "You need more chances for uninterrupted sex. Why don't you just admit that you've dismissed females and thus our threesome, horny boy?"

"Don't play around, C.C. This is goodbye."

She spent a long time looking at his eyes. Lelouch allowed his heart to show there, raw.

"Lelouch." C.C.'s voice murmured, after a time. "Will you stamp out everyone you love before you die?"

Lelouch was careful not to ask C.C. what part she'd played in planning the parade. Was the parade a distraction, or Lelouch's deathtrap? Was there some other plan? How was Lelouch really going to die? Even if he now knew when….

He kept his voice even and calm. "My love is about to become incidental. In less than a day, the world will hate me more than it has ever hated me before, and more than it will ever be able to hate again. Suzaku has put me behind him. Do you understand, C.C.?"

He didn't want her knowing that he knew, and yet he did. He didn't want to talk about it, make it that much more real; he didn't want to make her ask how much he had divined from conversations, and yet…. She was his witch. She ought to know—

"History will never know how dumb you were in person."

"Live and write the history, C.C.. But for now, pack your bags and go away." He didn't smile. "My love for you will make me weak, when I need more than ever to be strong. "

"Weak!" C.C. was chuckling now – as if she could make up for his stone-faced approach to the adieu. Moisture glittered in her eyes. "Love, make you weak? You're a boy after all."

Lelouch said, "Only on the outside."

He waited to see whether she'd rebuke him. She didn't; she hugged herself and glanced around for Cheese-kun.

This really was their goodbye, wasn't it. Lelouch cleared his throat, capturing her gaze again. He waited now only for C.C. to accept what they both knew was a request. Never an order, for someone like her.

 _I'm asking you to leave, so you don't have to watch me die_.

"Very well, Lelouch. But I'm not going far." She said it and Lelouch tried not to sigh. "I'll be nearby, until you're gone. After all, I'm still your accomplice."

She told Lelouch that she would go stay near the chapel.

Lelouch frowned. He said, "Religion?"

C.C. closed her other pizza boxes. "I'll pray that when you get to Hell, the Devil gives up right away and lets you rule as emperor there too. Perhaps then, when I make it down, the underworld will be a better place."

She thought he would conquer the next world as well. "I'm going to heaven, you impudent witch."

They smiled at the joke of it. She kissed Lelouch and squeezed his shaking hands.

"Farewell, Lelouch." She walked him to the door.

He felt a little silly, standing after, in the hall. She moved around inside the room, but Lelouch couldn't go back in.

He'd said goodbye. Goodbyes never went quite as planned. Better, perhaps, to improvise what partings he had left… or just avoid goodbyes entirely.

He spent time in the library. He tried not to think about how reading consumed his hours. What did Lelouch want to do with his time? Just normal things. Not think. Just  _be_.

"Jeremiah," Lelouch ventured, when the man came through the rows of books to tell him it had gotten late. "Your level of attention is acute. My mother was a lucky knight."

"There's no need to mock me, please, Your Majesty. It  _is_  an obscene hour, and you've been here for—"

"I didn't mean to mock. I'm expressing gratitude."

Jeremiah's one human eye combed him. Then he dropped into a bow. "If that is the case, then let me also express mine."

Jeremiah bared his neck. The bow said,  _You have earned my most professional respect._ It wasn't dedication, or that warm, familial love. The bow showed a businesslike deference – but it was the kind Lelouch knew Jeremiah reserved only for those he admired. Those untouchable, like Marianne.

Jeremiah Gottwald held the bow, until an overcome Lelouch suggested that he rise.

Lelouch took a long and ambling stroll outside, refusing Jeremiah's company. He breathed the scents of flowers on the air. He found the lily scent too strong. He thought about clusters of clover instead – how they would look dewy, dozing in the humid night.

When Lelouch went back indoors, the time was late indeed. Tiny hours made themselves known on the hallway clocks. Past one a.m.. Lelouch examined the hall paintings. Two a.m.. He made his way into the foyer.

Suzaku sat shining his boots on the floor, at the epicenter of the entryway. He ignored the smattering of posted guards, and the posted guards completely ignored him. At last accustomed to the Geass that made them all believe him dead, it seemed. That or just defiant of it. Or wanting to surround himself with irony. Unclear, Lelouch decided wearily.

"What's the matter?" Suzaku asked, without looking up at the falling of steps.

"Nothing, Suzaku," Lelouch said. He reached the staircase and looked at its velvet-swathed incline. He put his hand upon the banister, tracing the veins on the marble.

"No," said Suzaku. "Don't just lie." A little of the old, familiar darkness tinged the words. The rasping sound of scrubbing carried on.

Could Suzaku read Lelouch so very well? He wondered if Suzaku had noticed C.C. pack her bags and slip away.

Lelouch wished he could tell Suzaku everything he knew and feared. The tension… the lingering pressure to solve things Lelouch knew were unsolvable could have been quantified in pounds. But what could Lelouch do, just now? What could Suzaku do, if he understood? Wasn't it enough, to let Lelouch retire to bed, for what would be the last chance in his life at having dreams?

Or maybe Lelouch wanted to stay right here. Here, where he could watch Suzaku work until the dawn. Suzaku sat digging that toothbrush into the cracks in his boots with greasy leather cleaner. The simple things. The actions of a human life.

"It's nothing, Suzaku." Lelouch tried to mean it.

Suzaku saw Lelouch's hand tremble upon the banister. The swishing of the toothbrush stopped. A wrist came up to swipe across his brow. "Is there anything you think you want to do? We could, I don't know. Go look up at the stars." Suzaku phrased his questions neutrally. He buffed his shining boot and dried his hands.

Lelouch ignored Suzaku's empty queries in favor of posing his own. "Is there anything you feel you want to ask me?"

Suzaku was the one who needed loose ends tied off – soon. Unanswered questions and silly curiosities would never be addressed, if they were not addressed tonight before Lelouch died. Did Suzaku want excuses from him? Explanations for a plethora of deeds? To know what kind of shampoo Lelouch used, or why he had picked Hamlet out to read?

"No, Lelouch. There isn't anything."

Lelouch said, "Ah." Indeed. What should he make of that? "Then I guess stargazing is fine."

He waited for Suzaku to stand, to process that Lelouch was accepting the offer posed. Gazing at stars was as flimsy a consolation prize and as disingenuous an offer of comfort as Suzaku's frown instantly said he'd known it was. Lelouch did not particularly mind Suzaku's deceit, or his careful impassivity, or his consternation that Lelouch had agreed. What Suzaku didn't see…. The real gift Suzaku had offered when he'd spoken… was more time they could spend together. Despite that Suzaku had burdens of his own to attend to, like grooming himself for an emperor's murder, he'd given Lelouch an opportunity to monopolize some attention.

And hell if Lelouch wouldn't take it. Improvising.

Suzaku said, "I know where we can go."

Lelouch allowed himself to be led to the palace roof. Lloyd's telescope loomed there, one great dome. They walked around its gleaming side, and Lelouch read the etched inscription on it.

_To Earl Pudding, On His Birthday, So He Can Find The Black Hole Where His Sanity And Heart Have Gone._

Lelouch exhaled a chuckle through his nose. He wondered if seeming-insanity was a prerequisite for creating something grand.

 _Grand_. Destroying and creating the world was something grand as well. Or so he hoped.

Lelouch looked at the stars, craning his neck, when Suzaku said, "I think I know Orion and the Dippers."

The stars shined on the planes of Suzaku's face like moonlight on a glass tide pool. Maybe Lelouch could become a star, too – a sharp, glittering fleck of light that watched over Suzaku – once he died. Lit up Suzaku's exquisite expressions for someone to see on a windless, clear night.

Suzaku removed his velvety cape. Lelouch's thoughts skipped from the stars to a different cape – the Zero one. The Zero outfit hugged a little too tightly to Suzaku's shoulders…. But Suzaku had refused to let Lelouch make him another.  _I want yours_ , was what Suzaku had said. Lelouch had at least changed the hems at the bottom.

Suzaku spread the cape out on the roof. "Would you like to sit?" he asked.

Lelouch found the question charming. He knew Suzaku hadn't meant the inquiry as such.

He asked a much less charming question back, although it blurted out of him unplanned. "Suzaku. Why did you let us have sex on the Ikaruga?"

Suzaku absorbed the query, freezing, as Lelouch walked toward the railing instead of sitting in the spot Suzaku had made.

The whiteness of his clothing matched the painted wood. Lelouch made a note of his equally white knuckles, wondering if Suzaku were angry with him, if Suzaku would have done anything to keep Lelouch from bringing up events that might have mattered tonight.

"Because I wanted to," Suzaku replied.

"That's not an answer." Lelouch smiled, wry.

Suzaku didn't sit on his cape either. "At that time," Suzaku said, speaking to Lelouch from where he stood, behind, "I'd never felt more conflicted in my life. Your father's Geass had been used on even Anya. Shirley had just died. And I had watched you trick Sir Guilford. Kallen had refused to implicate you, even when I threatened her with some Refrain—"

"You threatened Kallen. With Refrain."  _You hypocrite._

"I did. She hit me." No remorse. Suzaku felt he'd got what he deserved. "It made me start to think some more. But even getting punched by Kallen couldn't clear my head." The familiar rasp in Suzaku's voice made Lelouch smile more, but soberly. "My uncertainty got worse. Formation of the UFN caught me off guard. Then Nina, asking me if I'd consider strapping FLEIJA on the Lancelot. Nunnally was being used. The whole world was a mess of lies.  _I_ had lied, to myself and Nunnally. I started to think I'd been wrong all along. And in the middle of my confliction, you—"

"I took advantage of you, at your weakest."

Lelouch had not yet turned around; he still kept his hands on the railing. He looked at the lawn four stories down, instead of at the vast expanse of stars. If he breathed deeply, he could smell the grass.

"We had sex because I lured you into it. I confused you more, right at the time you should have been feeling most grounded. I was  _Zero_ , Suzaku. I gave you angry ultimatums. Instead of fight you fairly, I seduced you. You should have slit my throat for that… but I never provided you the opportunity. Your participation in our intercourse was forced, because sex was the only weapon left at your disposal." Lelouch drew one pale hand across his eyes. "Suzaku, yes. I understand."

He stopped short of thanking Suzaku for his honesty. It wouldn't do either of them a bit of good if Lelouch became reflective now. Suzaku was working up to killing him. He wouldn't want reminders that Lelouch was human – brimming with thoughts, with memories… and Lelouch didn't want to brim with them. He wanted to live in the here and the now. He didn't want to assemble himself, one last time, trying to organize and sum up who he was and what he'd done. How did one summarize or justify a human life?

Suzaku unleashed a soft, frustrated sound. Lelouch heard footsteps. Then his hand was pulled down from his eyes.

Suzaku's hold and his probing gaze were neutral. "No. That isn't it at all. I made a decision, before I got to the shrine. It carried through, into that second meeting. You had called me up, and you'd told me the truth. Never mind that you begged me for help. Never mind that you lied again, when I asked you about Euphy, Shirley, and my Geass.  _You told me_  that you were Zero. Those words came from your own lips."

Lelouch swallowed and wrenched his hand away, dissolving Suzaku's light, possessive hold. "I don't understand," he said.

Suzaku looked at Lelouch squarely. "I really like honesty."

Lelouch stared back. And then he laughed. Desperately, shortly, and softly while Suzaku frowned.

"You're telling me that I told you the truth, and it changed your mentality enough that you would sleep with me? You  _wanted_  to, simply because of that? You liked hearing that reality so much?"

Suzaku's expression gave him nothing to work with, but his body language said,  _Don't try me_.

Lelouch backed away. "I  _manipulated_ you into that whole wanton encounter. We had sex because I hardly allowed you the option not to." He turned, so Suzaku couldn't see his anger.

This was not supposed to happen; Suzaku couldn't say these things. Lelouch, by asking such a question, had only intended to realize again the ways he'd  _hurt_  Suzaku when he'd indulged their attraction.

Or so he would tell himself now, for the closure.

Lelouch also needed the rose-tinted lenses cast off, to prepare himself for his last grand act as demon emperor. Yes. Suzaku shouldn't try to sugarcoat the wrongs Lelouch committed. Lelouch needed to hear Suzaku condemn him. For the sake of Requiem.

"I liked—" Suzaku said, and he grabbed Lelouch again, "—that you presented yourself to me without lies. That, for once, I finally saw  _you_. You didn't manipulate me into anything I wasn't willing to give. I liked that you threw away all your pretend, and that when you flew off with Guilford, you did it with a resolve equal to Schneizel's. You did it like Zero, even though we saw your face."

"I took off my masks!" Lelouch cried. "All of them! Even the school persona – the only shred of glue that had been holding us together!"  _That_ Lelouch had been the one Suzaku had liked enough to pursue intimately. Hadn't it?

A drop of moisture escaped one Geass eye.

 _Tch_. Lelouch stormed off along the railing, walking to one corner of the roof. He stood there. And then he walked back. He had no time to mull there, did he.

Suzaku, expressing that he'd liked the real Lelouch…. Suzaku was sounding like Charles now, in the Realm of C – speaking of revealing one's whole self to help extinguish lies. Lelouch didn't want to hear this – hear that parts of what his father had dug up about human emotions was spot on. Suzaku appreciated what Lelouch was at his core? Suzaku didn't loathe him, even looking at Lelouch's tainted nucleus.

That was no good. That was no good at all.

"I have fond memories of school," Suzaku whispered. "I wouldn't change them for the world. But fonder memories preceded that. I remembered an unapologetic, exiled prince, who would stop at nothing to get the things he wanted – even from an angry Japanese boy with a wooden sword. That was who I boarded Zero's ship for – that ex-prince – and who I saw again, straddling me, ready all over to do as he pleased."

"Do as I pleased, for my own ego," Lelouch pressed. "For my vengeance! That boy wasn't there. It wasn't boldness, Suzaku. I exposed nothing that you've ever appreciated! No trait that you haven't – time and time again – condemned."

"Vengeance, to you, has always been a sort of justice. The straightforward kind you always preached when we were kids. That isn't the point, Lelouch. The point is, when we decided to meet, you weren't really Zero. When your desires and goals came out – yours, Lelouch's – when you cast Zero off long enough to admit that you were being selfish the whole time, just doing things for Nunnally…. You were showing me the  _truth_. You were making it possible again for us to work together. I liked that. I respected you for it, even if I felt like you'd messed up."

Lelouch flung up his hands. "All that—"

Suzaku did not let him finish. "From the very beginning, from the moment I reunited with you in front of C.C.'s capsule, I knew I'd be happy as long as you thrived, and just stayed you. When I didn't get killed, and I became your classmate, I wanted to watch you, guard you… and be wind under your wings. That meant learning all the truths about you. Stripping down walls and facades. Not fending off swaths of lies. So I'm saying—"

It was Suzaku's turn to hold onto the railing. Lelouch choked back his well of cold replies. All Suzaku had wanted… was the truth from Lelouch? For Lelouch to be himself, no matter how twisted he was?

So easy, for Suzaku to make these claims now. How was Lelouch expected to believe it?

"That doesn't explain why you wanted the sex, why you let us indulge our attraction to an intimate degree, Suzaku, if you were so angry I'd lied!" Lelouch tried to stifle the creak in his voice. He felt he'd go mad… and he might rather die.

Suzaku said again, "I wanted to." A satellite lit up behind him, drifting wide across the sky. Suzaku said, "I loved you, Lelouch."

Thought abandoned Lelouch entirely.

Suzaku's words cracked, like he'd been forced to swallow sand or breath through sawdust. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

 _Love_. Loved him.

Past tense. It registered.

Lelouch's failures had extinguished—

"What are you saying you feel for me now?"

But Lelouch didn't need to ask. Hatred, almost certainly. Lelouch prepared himself for the reply. It was the only answer left, the one he as emperor needed.

The Knight of Zero calmly backed away.

Suzaku Kururugi sank down to rest on one knee.

Lelouch choked on an abrupt sob. Suzaku finally, finally knelt? The style of the bow exceeded Jeremiah's reverence. The bareness of Suzaku's neck said,  _trust._ The ardor in his eyes said,  _passion_. The line of his arm at his chest told him,  _respect_. The whole of it said,  _awe, subservience,_ and _loyalty._ Lelouch wanted to touch the locks of hair that curled at the back of Suzaku's neck. He half reached out… but then he drew his pale hand back, because in that instant he had seen it tremble.

Suzaku stayed kneeling, head down, posing steady. Was Suzaku saying he'd surrendered to the soul-bond of a knight to his commander?

A link so fierce that it could not be broken. Stronger than romantic love. A tie that went beyond a carnal lust, beyond the uncertainty of continually-tested friendship. A pledge that spoke of fervent sacrifice.

A bond made of so much surrender that it cast bubbles around each of them, separating them.

Suzaku's body language and his words revealed vast volumes; Lelouch had precious little time to bask in Suzaku's confession. If what Suzaku had come to feel was bigger than the two of them… if all Suzaku's emotions and his loyalties were tied with his knighthood and with Requiem…. If Suzaku felt things so powerful that plainer, personal desires drowned when submerged next to them, then Lelouch's hope of securing their mutual devotion was already gone – and had been, well before Suzaku had left him at the fireplace.

Suzaku could only ever be the sword.

Suzaku remained on his knees, his head bowed. All they were to each other now, all they had been, even when Lelouch had still not understood…. All they could be was a force so impressive that it became untouchable.

That was what Suzaku wanted to show him. That anything they did now led to repercussions capable of twisting worlds. Lelouch could never be allowed to wish for simpler affection, ever again. Nevermore would they share easy closeness. They'd become too complicated, too rich – like a feast that couldn't be stomached by folk accustomed to a simpler fare – although the banquet tempted with its opulence each second it was on the table.

Fate had already decided this. Suzaku's admittance of earlier love – uncomplicated, before Requiem – came too late.

But it remained a miracle that it had come at all.

Suzaku snagged Lelouch's hand – the one that had again gone questing out toward tousled hair. Lelouch could feel Suzaku's warmth, even through Suzaku's gloves, as Suzaku tightened his grip to prevent an indulgent sweep of fingers.

Suzaku's head remained down. "Your Majesty, does that long answer satisfy?"

A hint of apology lent weight to it.

 _I'm sorry, Lelouch, but we ran out of time_.

"I love you," Lelouch told Suzaku in reply.

Suzaku's lips fell open, moist.

If this was the end, Lelouch would say it now, regardless of whether Suzaku believed him. Regardless of whether it changed a damn thing.

"I've always loved you, and I always will. I'm truly sorry I ever denied it. I love you even now, and I will love you when I die. I'll love you from beyond the grave they step upon to curse my name. I love you, profoundly. To the end of time."

Suzaku's lips closed again, becoming waxy-pale.

Lelouch couldn't bear to see Suzaku disturbed. He knew Suzaku had wished to stand up from his bow without such painful conversation. And so Lelouch at last withdrew his hand, and moved back toward the railing.

"Your answer satisfies me, Knight of Zero. Get off your knees. You're dismissed. Go inside."

All was quiet but the crickets, far below them on the lawn. The stars glittered, so very cold and bright.

Suzaku said, once on his feet, "I think we should go on a ride."

Lelouch turned, quietly astounded.

The night breeze breathed,  _do it_. They walked to the garage.

Suzaku unsheathed Guinevere. The tarp billowed; it revealed polished, glimmering curves. Lelouch took a full minute gazing upon it. Recalling. He took in a resigned Suzaku.

"Novelties like this are sometimes romantic." Lelouch repeated the remembered statement.

He climbed on. Suzaku chased the silver moon. They zipped along at speeds worthy of Knightmare frames. The wind got tangled in Lelouch's hair. Neither of them wore their helmets. So reckless…. Lelouch wished, a little, that they'd crash right here. Suzaku would live, but for him… he could go. With Suzaku, now, let this be the way he—

Lelouch shook himself. Shook himself loose and calm. He'd tucked his hat into a fold of his outfit, so it wouldn't fly away. The fingers of pre-dawn licked over the road, draping everything in a tremendous veil of gray. Lelouch took in the static lack of color. The world looked caught in stasis, like a newspaper photo; he wanted to imprint it in his mind and take it to the afterlife.

He pushed aside his hopes and dreams and fears. His heartbeat slowed to sleep-like, and he leaned close to Suzaku.

Suzaku drove with alertness and precision. The easy leaning curves along the road were his design. Suzaku turned the rough ride along alleys to a smooth one. Always beautiful, precise.

Lelouch didn't look at the passing scenery. He didn't need to. Everything he wanted was right here.

When Lelouch nestled his forehead between broad shoulder blades, all but a soft peace dissolved around him. Suzaku allowed Lelouch's hold to drift – to squeeze around his waist, to trace the flatness of his chest. No…. Suzaku didn't  _allow_  it. Lelouch saw for the first time – Suzaku invited it.

Suzaku desired these things, just the way Lelouch did. He didn't 'put up with' or 'tolerate' closeness.

For the first time since he'd fallen for Suzaku, Lelouch clung to his knight and understood how Suzaku's wants were the same as his own. He must have been a fool never to see it. Suzaku gave Lelouch control – the choice to act, whenever he might want the comfort. Suzaku made it  _easy_  to choose comfort, by leaning into contact when it happened. He drove carefully now on Guinevere – but not so carefully Lelouch would drop his heedful hold. And Suzaku had never turned down Lelouch's touches. Suzaku enjoyed Lelouch's affection, his gestures of closeness when he dared indulge. Suzaku didn't mind if Lelouch spoke in tender words.

It never was about the sex. It never was about carnal desire. Lelouch crushed Suzaku closer.

"Feeling tired?" Soft. And caring.

"As if I could sleep." Pain in his chest.

The world had begun to come back into color. Suzaku turned the bike smartly around. Lelouch didn't question the decision; he let Suzaku change their course to greet the dawn.

Tarmac and vehicles took shape from where they rode, still far away. Too soon, the bike was slowing down, in the middle of a lot where soldiers stood at attention, worked, or murmured.

Jeremiah waited in the distance. Just behind him was the hulking royal float. He gestured something, pointing at his wrist, and then at the sun. Suzaku slowed the bike before they reached where they could hear the called-out words.

Then Suzaku stopped. He drew a shaking breath.

Lelouch stepped off the bike at once – and straight into the sun-kissed breeze, drifting like the air and light, and not looking behind at all.

The royal float waited for him. This parade, this public execution was his duty. These men were looking for their emperor. Lelouch would give them all what they required.

Guinevere's engine puttered, grating low – like Suzaku's voice underneath it.

"I think I lied. I love you still. Right now."

"And I you, always, Suzaku." A smile broke across Lelouch's face; he turned back once – to catch Suzaku's fervent eyes.

He walked away, stirred by that deep, disarming green. The sun dazzled, a lemon rind that glowed above the lowest buildings.

He felt as ready as he'd ever be. As perfect as somebody so imperfect could desire.

He'd go somewhere and start over with a stripped-clean slate… and he would wait for Suzaku.


End file.
